Dusty Star Part 8

It was extremely difficult to explain anything at all. Because it really was an unheard of thing that an Indian boy should sit neighbourly at your front door, and spill his mind out at you in a way you couldn't smell! Yet when Dusty Star did it, it didn't seem odd at all, but as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Yet now Baltook came, and made it seem all odd again, because he carried with him the _foxiness of things_ which had always remained foxy since the beginning of the world!

In this embarra.s.sing situation, there was only one thing to be done, and Boola did it. She advanced six paces toward her mate, and touched his nose with hers. Among the wild peoples the nose is a most important organ for conveying information. Because great persons like the President of the United States and the King of England do not use it for conversational purposes, does not alter the fact. Just exactly what Boola told Baltook by this means, I do not know. Whatever it was, Baltook was rea.s.sured, and came slowly up to the mouth of the den. Dusty Star never stirred. But again--as he had done with Boola--he moved his mind towards Baltook, while he kept his body still.

And so, while the afternoon climbed still higher, and the evening came softly after it, on its soundless shadow-feet, the three sat on silently together and learnt to know each other, without anything being said. It is like that in the forest-life. You sit in silence, with your mind open; and so you learn to understand.

When at last Baltook and then Boola began to show signs of restlessness, Dusty Star knew it was time to go. He never said good-bye. There was no need. He just rose to his feet quietly and walked down into the trees.

The two foxes carefully smelt the place where he had sat, and then, while Boola went back to her cubs, Baltook followed the trail.

It was very dark when Dusty Star reached the camp. Kiopo, who was out hunting, had not returned. Dusty Star made a fire by rubbing two sticks together in the Indian way, in order to be ready to cook anything which Kiopo might bring back.

In the gloom of the dark woods, a black shadow having a wrinkling nose sat up and smelt the fire with wonder, and violent disapproval; and when a little later, the figure of an enormous wolf holding a hare in his jaws, glided into the open, the shadow with the wrinkling nose followed the best fox-wisdom and melted back into the trees.

Although Dusty Star did not actually tell Kiopo where he had been visiting, Kiopo smelt foxiness, and learnt a good deal. Foxes he did not mind, so long as they behaved themselves. If Dusty Star had been with them, Kiopo was not going to make a fuss. So, Dusty Star cooked and ate his hare supper, and thought of the little foxes, and wished they had the bones.

CHAPTER XII

GOSHMEELEE

In the deep, damp silence of the ancient forest you could not hear a sound. Through the swampy thickets, sodden with old rain, and floored with slime, nothing stirred. The very trees--cedar, tamarack, waterash, and black poplar--seemed to do their growing by stealth, as if afraid of its being found out. Even the skunk cabbage--that robust vegetable--spread its broad leaves craftily, as if it covered a world of secrecy, and might at any moment be forced to confess. If any life were gnawing at the roots of this damp silence, or paddling among the slime, its teeth and toes were m.u.f.fled. The world just here was dreadfully damp, dreadfully secret, and dreadfully old.

Not a nice nursery for babies, you might imagine. In such a place, if ever a baby were rash enough to get born there, you would think it must be born old, and be damp for the rest of its days. Which only shows how deceptive things may be. For--in the very heart of the dampness, and where the ancientness was so old as to have begun falling to pieces--two perfectly new, and (what is perhaps even more surprising) perfectly dry babies were curled up in a hollow scooped out between the roots of a couple of hemlocks growing together on a knoll! Neither the dampness, nor the ancientness, nor the silence, nor the gloom, nor any of the other things which would have made ordinary civilized people uncomfortable, had the least effect upon the babies. To be quite truthful, I must here remark that it was partly because they were fast asleep. If you curl yourself up very tight, and sleep very sound, and if, when you wake, you spend a good deal of your spare time in taking in food, it is quite surprising what a snug place the old, damp world may seem; and it would be quite ridiculous to sit up and worry.

Except very rarely the babies did not sit up. Their usual position when awake was a sprawling one on their stomachs, while they pushed their little fore paws into their mother's and sucked and sucked and sucked.

And most certainly they never worried; worrying being a disease which grown people seem to catch from each other in places where the sky sc.r.a.pers go up and scratch the stars.

The babies in the tamarack swamp knew nothing about civilization. Their umbrella was the hemlock and their mother's body was the stove. And if a raving wind moaned gustily in the poplars, and twisted the tamaracks till they creaked, the umbrella never closed and the stove never burned out.

Perhaps I ought to be a little more accurate about the stove. It did not burn out, but it sometimes _went_ out. Occasionally when the babies woke up, they found that the stove had gone out walking, taking care, however, to leave part of its warmth behind.

One day Dusty Star, on his way across to the opposite side of the valley to dig roots, pa.s.sed through the spruce wood which skirted the swamp on its eastern side. On the brown, elastic carpet of dead fir needles, he went without paying any special heed to his footsteps, because the travelling was so good. Suddenly round the end of a hollow tree, he found himself face to face with a large black she-bear.

Now Dusty Star knew nothing about the babies in the tamarack swamp, nor that this great furry blackness was their blessed heating apparatus gone out for a walk. But he knew that a bear as a bear can be an extremely dangerous animal if there is any reason for its being cross. Also he knew that, of all the wild creatures, a bear is the most human, and is prepared, at a moment's notice, to do all sorts of unexpected things.

Goshmeelee gazed at Dusty Star with disapproval out of her little s.h.i.+ning eyes. She had no desire to have people hanging about the borders of the tamarack swamp, whether they had business there or not. They might mean no harm to her babies, even if they found them, which was very unlikely; but she wasn't going to take any risks. What sort of creature this new animal was, she couldn't directly decide. Its going on its hind legs was bear-like, but, except on the top of its head, it was very deficient in fur.

Dusty Star remembered that Lone-Chief once presented to him a piece of very old Indian wisdom: "Bear won't bother you, if you don't bother bear." But in case you _did_ meet a bear that seemed determined to be bothered, another piece ran: "If Bear is angry, make medicine with your mouth."

Now although Dusty Star was sure he hadn't done anything to make Goshmeelee angry, he was quick enough to see by the glint in her eyes that she was uneasy in her mind. So, he thought it could do no harm if he followed Lone-Chief's second piece of advice.

The "medicine" he made with his mouth was very curious. It consisted of all sorts of Indian words the like of which Goshmeelee had never heard in all her life before. The sound was very strange, yet she did not find it altogether unpleasant. A creature that could make a noise like this was certainly to be studied. So, in order to study more at her ease Goshmeelee sat down in front of Dusty Star, with her big black paws hanging in front of her, while she held her head first on one side and then on the other, in a comical kind of way.

Translated into our own language, this is the "medicine" which Dusty Star made:

"I am the Little Brother.

I am the Little Brother to all the Forest Folk.

But I am the Little Brother to Kiopo first of all.

The forest is very big, and has many ranges.

If it is big enough for me, it is big enough for you.

If I have got into your range, there's no occasion for you to fuss.

The Bears are a wise folk. They have a strong medicine.

When they are among the trees, they are in the middle of their medicine.

My folk live a long way back east, where the sun comes up out of the prairies.

They have a medicine which they make among the Lodges.

It is a strong medicine, and many birds and beasts have given it their power.

Our medicine-men make it in the moon when the Thunder-bird claps his wings in Heaven.

You cannot harm me, even if you wished it.

My medicine is stronger than your medicine of the Bears."

Dusty Star paused. All the time he had been making his "medicine,"

Goshmeelee, except for turning her head from one side to another in her droll way, had never moved. It is true that she did not understand a single word of what Dusty Star had said. In spite of that she was impressed. Somehow, or other, the power of the "medicine" had spelled itself out of the words and trickled into her head. She knew that this creature that owned the strange medicine was something she must not hurt. She also knew that he would not hurt _her_. But the babies! In her fierce mother-love, they mattered more than herself. On their account she was not quite satisfied.

How Dusty Star became aware that Goshmeelee had cubs, is one of the many mysteries. The forest is a place of hidden secrets. Yet sometimes the secrets get carried, like thistledown, on fine currents, and are pa.s.sed from brain to brain. So, gradually, a light dawned on Dusty Star; and he _knew_. And in the same secret way, Goshmeelee knew that he knew, and also was aware that she need have no fear. As her mind was at rest, she allowed her body to be also. And in order to be completely at her ease, she sat down where she was widest, and looked at her new acquaintance with a humorous expression in her little gleaming eyes.

"It is a good place for them." Dusty Star remarked, after he had looked at Goshmeelee silently for some time.

By "Them" he referred, of course, to the cubs.

Goshmeelee simply blinked. But the blink was as good as if she had said:

"I, Goshmeelee, am a person of much wisdom. If I choose a place, I know what I am about. My children have everything which they require."

Naturally Dusty Star wasn't going to argue as to whether Goshmeelee was a suitable parent for her own children.

"Wolves not wanted," she suddenly remarked.

Dusty Star, looking at her, saw that the humour had gone out of her eyes. She looked almost fierce. Kiopo had not been mentioned. But he saw that Goshmeelee knew.

"I shall tell my wolf," he said quietly. "He will not harm them!"

A look shot out of Goshmeelee's eyes which there was no mistaking. It said, as plainly as words, that if any wolf was so ill-advised as to attempt to harm any babies he might happen to find in that swamp, she had a claw or two, in a paw or two, which that wolf would devoutly wish had been pulled out when she was born!

After that, the conversation, which had never been very fluent, dragged a little, and though Goshmeelee didn't cease to be friendly, Dusty Star felt that perhaps it was time that the interview came to an end. So, letting her understand how glad he was to have made her acquaintance, and again a.s.suring her that neither he nor his wolf were persons to be uneasy about, he moved quietly away.

Goshmeelee watched him carefully till he was out of sight, and then remarked to herself, that the forest was becoming dreadfully overcrowded, and that she hoped the new Carboona neighbours would know how to behave.

If she had happened to be at the other end of the swamp, and had seen another human figure working its way stealthily through the underbrush, as if it wished to avoid observation, her feeling about over-crowding would have been even stronger than it was. But fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not see it, and so went back to the lair between the hemlock roots totally unconscious of the fact that a far more objectionable intruder than Dusty Star had crossed the borders of the forbidden land which swampily surrounded the treasures of her heart.

As he returned home, Dusty Star also was equally unaware of the intruder picking a cautious way through the shadowy stillness on moccasins that seemed to avoid by instinct every fallen twig. He, too, by force of habit, moved silently through the woods. But by this time he had ceased to feel that he was in a strange land, and followed the trail with the certainty of one who knows he is going home.

Very different, indeed, the pa.s.sage of that other figure, which seemed to be seeking for something which kept itself in hiding behind the forest screen.

And although in his own evil heart, Double Runner knew full well the object of his search, to the eyes of the wilderness he was a suspicious mystery that followed an unknown quest along an invisible trail.

And so along that trail, nearer and nearer to the Yellow Dog camp by the Chetawa river, and little guessing that less than half-a-league divided him at the moment from his unsuspecting prey, Double Runner, the artful mischief-maker, took his noiseless path.