Sweetapple Cove Part 20

"Git out o' there, ye imp!" she cried. "Them birds would pick the nails offen yer boots if they was good ter eat."

"They are ever so pretty," I said. "And oh! look at that poor little chap. He hopped into the frying pan and scalded his toes."

The indignant bird flew away, uttering perfectly disgraceful language, but the others seemed to be quite indifferent to his fate and remained, bent on securing every discarded crumb.

After this a flight of yellow-leg snipe pa.s.sed by. Dr. Grant began to whistle their soft triple note and the wisp of birds circled in the air, coming nearer and nearer until, becoming suspicious, they winged their journey away. And then we were invaded by a troop of grosbeaks who gathered in the neighboring bushes, their queer, tiny voices, seeming quite out of place, coming out of such stocky, strong little bodies. In the meanwhile a woodp.e.c.k.e.r was tap-tapping on a dead juniper. It was all so very different from the cruel, ragged coast with its unceasing turmoil of hungry waves breaking upon the cliffs. Here there reigned such a wonderful peace, interrupted only by the song of birds. There were soft outlines in the distance, and everywhere the scent of balsams. Of course it was all very desolate; a vast swamp dominated by sterile ridges of boulder-strewn hills; an immense land of peat-bogs and mosses, grey and green and purplish, upon which only the caribou and the birds appeared able to live. Yet it was no longer a place where the fury of the elements was ever ready to unchain itself against poor people clinging to their bare rocks. The breath of one's nostrils went ever so deep in one's lungs, and one's muscles seemed to gather energy and respond ever so much more efficiently than they ever did in big towns.

"I don't think I ever before realized the beauty of great waste places,"

I said. "It looks like a world infinite and wonderful, over which we might be traveling in quest of some Holy Grail that should be hidden away beyond those pink and mauve mountains."

The doctor smiled, in his quiet way.

"Yes," he said. "One feels as if one could understand the true purpose of living, which should be the constant effort to attain something ever so glorious that lies beyond, always beyond."

I wonder just what he meant by that, Aunt Jennie?

Soon our little caravan went on, and we began to see many tracks of caribou, chiefly does and fawns. In low swampy places we several times came across old wind-and rain-bleached antlers, shed in the late fall of the previous year.

We had traveled for a couple of hours since luncheon when we stopped for another breathing spell. Sammy was explaining the lie of the country to the doctor, who nodded. Then the latter showed me a tiny valley where ran, amid a tangle of alders and dwarf trees, a large brook that wandered slowly, with many curves, to join the river far away on our right.

"At this time of the year there is not much chance of finding a stag in the open," he said. "They remain in places like that, hidden in the alders until it is time for them to wander off and make up their family parties. Are you very tired, Miss Jelliffe?"

I a.s.sured him that I was still feeling ever so fit.

"We are only about a mile and a half from the place where we are to camp for the night," he told me. "The others will go there and get things ready. Frenchy can return here for my pack. If you would like to come with me and hunt along the brook we should make it a somewhat longer journey, owing to the many bends, but we should have a chance of getting a stag."

Of course I told him that I should like it ever so much, and we made our way down a slope while the others continued along the ridge. Indeed I was not tired at all. Notwithstanding the sodden moss in which our feet had been sinking for hours, and the peaty black ooze that held one back, I had no trouble in following Dr. Grant, who was carefully picking out the best going.

After we reached the brook we went along the bank, but were soon compelled to leave it owing to the impenetrable tangles of alders, around which we had to circle. The doctor stopped to show me some tracks of otters, and then we came to a place where the bank was steep, and a little smooth path was worn down upon its face, leading into the water.

"An otter slide," he explained. "They run up the bank and toboggan down into the water, again and again. It is a sort of game they play."

"How I should like to see them!" I exclaimed.

He put a finger up to his lips, enjoining silence, and led the way towards a deep pool. Then he turned and lifted up his hand. We remained motionless, hidden behind a rank growth of alders and reeds, and I suddenly saw a little black head upon the water and caught the gleam of a pair of bright eyes. Then came a splash, and the ruffled water smoothed over. We waited, but never saw him again.

"That was a big, old, dog otter," said the doctor.

We continued on our winding way, finding a very few tracks of does and fawns, but occasionally we came across the broad imprint of a big stag.

"He must be living somewhere around here," whispered my companion.

He looked very alert now, noting every sign and stopping to investigate the waving of gra.s.ses and the motions of leaves. We peered in every tangle of bush and shrub, and moved as silently as we possibly could.

We had slowly been following the stream for nearly an hour, and were on the edge of the brook when the doctor quickly knelt down, and of course I followed his example. He pointed towards some alders ahead of us.

"See those tops moving?" he whispered.

"I see them bending with the wind," I replied, in the same low voice.

"There is no wind here," he said. "It must be a stag or a bear in there."

We kept on watching and, Aunt Jennie, my heart was beating so with the excitement of it that I could hardly keep still. But I insist that I was not the least bit scared. I rather think that Dr. Grant impresses one as a man who could take care of bears or anything else that might threaten one. Presently, above the green leaves, appeared something that looked like stout, reddish branches. We could see them only for an instant, and then they went down again.

"It's a big, old stag," whispered the doctor.

"What shall we do?" I asked.

"I am going to give you a shot," he said.

"I shouldn't dare. I am sure I should miss," I answered.

"You must try. You know that you are the lucky one. I am going to leave you here with the rifle and I shall crawl back a little way. If we went on he would jump away on the other side of the alders and that would be the last of him. I am going off to the right, and then I will walk slowly towards him. The river is shallow here, and it is the only open spot. He will surely jump in it, and probably stop for a second to see what is coming, for he won't smell me. You will have a fine chance at him from here."

He placed the gun in my hands, already c.o.c.ked, and was gone, noiselessly, in an instant. I watched those bushes eagerly, and once again saw the big tops of those antlers above the alders. Behind me everything was wonderfully still, and I could hear the beating of my heart. The doctor seemed to have been swallowed up by the wilderness, and I have never felt so entirely alone as at that moment. An instant later I realized that a strange thing was happening; I was no longer nervous, and my hands were perfectly steady. After this, away to the right, I heard the faintest crackling of branches and the horns appeared again, absolutely still for a moment. Then another little branch cracked, and there was a turmoil in the bushes, a splas.h.i.+ng over the shallow, gravelly bottom of the little stream, and the great, gray-brown body and white, arching neck of the stag appeared, like a thing out of a fairy book. The head was n.o.ble, poised on that snowy neck, and the antlers looked like a tangle of brush.

The lithe thing stopped, the sensitive ears went back, and he started again.

But the gun had gone up to my shoulder, Aunt Jennie, quite instinctively, and for a fraction of a second I saw that wonderfully feathered neck in the notch of the sight, then a brown place that was the beginning of the shoulder, and I pulled the trigger. His long trot changed to a furious, desperate gallop. A leap up the further bank carried him out of my sight, and I was now so flurried that I never gave him a second shot.

Indeed I felt so badly that I wanted to sit down and have a good cry.

I heard the doctor, who was tearing through the bushes, just as Harry Lawrence used to b.u.t.t his way through a football line.

"You've got him," he yelled. "They never run like that unless mortally wounded. We'll have him in a moment!"

"Do you really think so?" I cried, breathlessly.

"Come on and see for yourself," he answered, and in our turn we splashed through the shallow water and found the track on the other side. This we very carefully studied, so as to be able to distinguish it from others, and then we went on, very cautiously, both walking on tiptoe. He was ahead of me, with the c.o.c.ked rifle in his hand, but after going a short distance he stopped, suddenly, and began to fill his pipe, with the most exasperating coolness.

"Why don't you go on?" I asked, indignantly.

"Don't you think I deserve a pipe?" he said.

"You don't deserve anything," I told him. "I want my stag."

"_Mademoiselle est servie_" he said, laughing. "And you are indeed a most lucky young woman."

"Where is it? Where is it?" I cried. "You are trying to be as mean as can be just now, and I won't speak to you again to-day or any other day if you don't stop."

But I was looking around as I spoke and suddenly, under a little clump of birches, I saw something that made my heart beat fast again, and I dashed away, shouting, as I verily believe, and running as fast as the deer when I had last seen him. I had the advantage of the start and I beat the doctor to the quarry. It was lying there, the most splendid thing you ever saw, and I am sure I spoke in awed tones, as one does in a big cathedral.

"I had no idea that it would be so big. Oh! The beautiful clean limbs!

And what a head! Those big flat horns in front that run down nearly to his muzzle are just wonderful! It seems to me that I just saw him for a second and pulled the trigger, and there was a little report that I scarcely heard, just as if the gun was a little toy thing, and now he is lying there and I don't know whether to be glad or sorry."

"You should be glad," he told me. "You might hunt for many months without meeting with such a head as that. Now that it is all over it may seem a bit tragic, but you must remember he was just a tremendous, handsome brute, ready at all times to fight others to the death, to kill them in his blind fury of jealousy. And those who fall to the gun may perhaps have met the best end of all. Think of the poor old stags dragging themselves to some tangle in order to escape the wolves or bears and lynxes, and whose last glances reveal things creeping towards them or great birds waiting to peck their eyes out. Man is seldom as cruel as nature proves to be, for it is everywhere harsh and brutal. Little dramas are constantly taking place under this very moss we tread, and those dear little black-headed birds, over there in the bushes, are killing all day long. You and I realize that the killing is the least part of the sport, but we wanted meat and came out for it ourselves, instead of hiring butchers to do the slaughtering for us. Moreover, you have a trophy which you will take back with you, and which will be one more souvenir of Sweetapple Cove."

I felt that I was brightening up again.

"How beautiful it is!" I said again, quite consoled. "Look at that long, white beard under his neck, and how deeply brown his cheeks are!"