The Haunters of the Silences Part 8

His flight now led him past the back lots of Ramsay's farm, where the cattle were pasturing. Either because his sudden fear made him seek companions.h.i.+p or with an idea of confusing his scent with that of the cattle, he leaped into the pasture and ran here and there among the mildly wondering cows. Then he leaped the fence again at the farthest corner, plumped into the thick underbrush, and headed toward the fields with which he had been wont to make so free. He had just vanished in the leaf.a.ge when his pursuers appeared at the other side of the pasture.

They ran in at once among the cows, paying no heed whatever to angry snorts and levelled horns, unravelled the trail with perfect ease, dashed over the fence again, and darted into the underbrush with a new note of triumph in their yelpings.

When the buck heard their voices so close behind him his knees almost gave way. He knew he could not run much farther, and he knew his s.h.i.+fts were all vain against such implacable foes as these. He half-paused, with a brave impulse to stand at bay. But some other impulse, undefined, but potent, urged him on toward Ramsay's farm. It was familiar ground, and he had never suffered any hurt there. He knew that the old farmer was most dangerous, but he was not an instant, horrible, inevitable menace like this which was close upon his heels. Moreover, he had seen the cattle go up to the barn-yard and take refuge there, and come away in safety.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEN HE LEAPED THE FENCE AGAIN."]

With the last of his ebbing strength he burst forth into the open, ran across the corn-field, pa.s.sed the corner of the garden, brushed against the end of the well-sweep, and paused before the open door of the stable. The heavy door was carelessly propped open with a stick. In contrast with the glare of the suns.h.i.+ne outside, the interior looked black and safe. But all about, though mixed with the smell of the cattle, was the dreaded smell of man. He wheeled aside, dimly intending to go around the stable and resume his hopeless flight, but as he did so the yelp of his pursuers broke louder upon his ears. He saw them break from the woods and dart into the corn-field. This decided him. He wheeled again, half-staggering, struck blunderingly against the stick which propped the door open, stumbled across the threshold, ran to the innermost depths of the stable, and fell gasping into a box stall which Ramsay had once built for a colt. At the same moment the heavy door, no longer propped back, swung to with a slam, the big wooden latch rising smoothly and dropping securely into place.

When the dogs arrived and found the door shut against them they broke into angry clamour. Once around the building they ran to see if there was any other entrance. Then they clawed savagely at the door, barking and growling in their balked fury. Their noise brought Ramsay on the run from the potato-field, over the rise, where he was working. He was surprised to see two strange dogs making such a fuss at his stable door.

Being a canny backwoodsman, however, instead of going straight to the door, he went around behind the stable and looked in the window.

When Ramsay saw the s.h.i.+vering, tawny form and great antlers on the floor of the stall his heart swelled with exultation. The coveted trophies were his. He ran into the kitchen for his gun. Then he changed his mind and picked up, instead, his long hunting-knife. When he approached the stable door the dogs turned upon him threateningly. But the crisp voice of authority with which he ordered them aside was something they were quite too clever to defy. Sullenly, with red eyes of wrath, they obeyed, waiting for their masters to arrive and support them.

Ramsay closed the door carefully behind him and strode to the box stall, knife in hand. On its threshold he paused and scrutinized the captive with triumphant admiration. Sure, besides the trophies of hide and horns, there was meat enough there to do him all winter--tough, perhaps, but sweet, seeing that it had been fatted on his choicest crops. He looked at the animal's heaving sides and realized what a magnificent run he must have made. Then as he stepped forward with his knife he wondered what could have induced the beast to flee to such a refuge. The buck was gazing up at him with wide eyes, rea.s.sured by the man's quiet. There was no terror in that gaze, but only a sort of anxious question; and he never flinched, though the laboured breath came quicker through his nostrils as the man approached his head.

As Ramsay met that anxious, questioning look, the eager triumph in his own eyes died away, and his grim mouth softened to a half-abashed, half-quizzical smile. The bright blade in his hand slipped furtively into his belt, as if he didn't want the buck to notice it. Then, muttering approvingly, "Ye've fooled 'em, ain't ye!" he picked up a little shallow tub that stood in a corner of the stall and started out to the well to get the beast a drink.

As he closed the stable door behind him two perspiring men with guns entered the yard from the corn-field, and were eagerly greeted by the dogs. "Good day," said one, politely. "We're after a big buck which our dogs here have run down for us. He must have hidden in your barn."

Ramsay eyed the visitors with ill disguised antagonism and fingered his scraggy chin before he answered.

"Ya-as," he drawled. "I've got a mighty fine buck in there--the old Ringwaak buck himself, as everybody's heard tell of. But, beggin' your pardon, friends, I reckon he's goin' to stay in there for the present."

The strangers studied the old man's strong face for a moment or two in silence, noted the latent fire in the depths of his eyes, and realized that there was nothing to be done. Whistling the dogs to heel, they strode off, angry and disgusted. But before they had gone far the one who had spoken turned around.

"I'll give you fifty dollars for those horns," he said abruptly.

"Ef they're wuth fifty dollars they're good enough for me to keep,"

drawled Ramsay, never moving from where he stood. And with resentful eyes he watched them out of sight before he went to the well.

During the next four days half the men and boys in the settlement, with not a few of the women, visited Ramsay's barn to view the famous captive. The buck, well fed and watered, had recovered himself in a few hours, and seemed none the worse for his adventure. All his former arrogance, too, had returned, and visitors were careful to keep at a safe distance. But Ramsay he recognized, apparently, as either protector or master, and Ramsay could enter the stall at any time. The buck would sidle off and eye him anxiously, but show no sign of the furious anger which the visitors excited.

To all inquiries as to what he would do with his captive Ramsay would answer, "Sell him to circus, maybe." But it was not till several weeks had pa.s.sed and the settlement had got over its interest in the matter that he was able to quite make up his mind. Then, one crisp autumn morning, when the woods were all yellow and red, he went over to the next farm and asked his neighbour, a handy young farmer, to come and help him get the captive aboard a hay-wagon.

"Got a chance to sell him up to the Falls," he vouchsafed in brief explanation, and the explanation was one to content the whole settlement.

There was a strenuous hour or two before the indignant animal was roped and trussed into helplessness. Then the bruised and panting men hoisted the prisoner into the hay-wagon and tied him so he could not be bounced off; and Ramsay started on the rough twenty-five mile drive to the Falls.

About seventeen miles from Ringwaak the road crossed the Ottanoonsis, whose wild current filled the valley with noise and formed an impa.s.sable northern frontier to the Ringwaak region. It was generally believed that the wild creatures of the Ringwaak region held little intercourse with those north of the Ottanoonsis, by reason of that stream's turbulence.

As soon as Ramsay found himself across the bridge he stopped and once more drew his hunting-knife. At the flash of the blade the captive looked up wonderingly from his bonds. Leaning over him, the old man's face broke into a sheepish grin. But he did not hesitate. Three or four properly distributed strokes of the knife, and the ropes fell apart. The captive lifted his splendid head, kicked, and struggled to his feet, bewildered.

"Now," said Ramsay, "Git!"

As he spoke he snapped his long whip sharply. With a magnificent leap the buck went out and over the wheels and vanished with great sailing bounds into the wild Ottanoonsis forest. Then Ramsay turned slowly back toward home, thinking a thrilling story for the settlement about the cunning escape of the Ringwaak buck.

The Heron in the Reeds

Though haying was almost done on the uplands, over the wide, level, treeless meadow-island the heavy gra.s.s stood still uncut, its rank growth taking long to ripen. The warm wind that drew across it from time to time in a vague, elusive rhythm was burdened with rich summer scents, the mid-noon distillations from the vetch and clover and lily and yellow-daisy blooms which thronged among the gra.s.s-heads, and from the flaunting umbels of the wild parsnip which towered above them. Over this radiant and pregnant luxuriance the air quivered softly, and hummed with the murmur of foraging bees and flies, glad in the heat.

The island lay on the tranquil river like a splendid green enamel on blue porcelain. Its level, at this season, lay several feet above that of the water, and its sh.o.r.es, fantastically looped with little, sweeping coves and jutting points, were fringed with deep rushes of intense, glaucous green. Whenever the wind puffed lightly over them, the tops of the rushes bowed gravely together in long ranks, and turned silvery gray. Here and there above them fluttered a snipe, signalling its hidden young, then winging off across the water to the next point, with a clear, two-noted whistle.

On one of the little jutting points, where a log lay half-submerged in trailing water-weeds, stood a tall blue heron balanced motionless on one long, stilt-like leg. Its head, drawn flat back between the high shoulders, came about ten inches above the tops of the sedge. Its long, keen, javelin-like beak lay along its protruding breast, in readiness to dart in any direction. Its round, gem-like eyes, hard as gla.s.s in their glitter, took in not only the wide, blue-and-green empty landscape, but equally every movement of the sedge-fringe and the weedy shallows along-sh.o.r.e.

For some minutes the great bird was as still as a carven figure. Then, for no apparent reason, the long neck uncoiled violently like a loosed crossbow, and the javelin beak shot downward with a movement almost too swift for the eye to follow. Deep into the weeds and water it darted,--to return with a small, silvery chub securely transfixed. One smart, sidelong blow of the wriggling fish upon the log ended its struggles. Then the skilful fisher threw his prize up in the air, caught it as it fell, swallowed it head foremost, and relapsed into his watchful immobility.

This time he had not quite so long to wait. Again the coiled spring of his neck was loosed, again that lightning lance darted downward into the water, and returned with a kicking trophy. Now it was a large brown-and-green frog, which the victor had more difficulty in killing.

For half a minute he whacked it savagely against the side of the log, before he could satisfy himself that the limp, bedragged form was past all effort to escape. Then, picking it up between the tips of his beak, he stepped from his log, strode with awkward dignity some paces up the sh.o.r.e, and hid the prize safely in the heart of a tussock of sedge-gra.s.s. Not only for himself was the big blue heron fis.h.i.+ng, but also, and first of all, for certain extraordinarily hungry nestlings in a cedar swamp behind the neighbouring hills.

Having hidden the frog, the heron raised his head and steadily surveyed the sh.o.r.es. Then he spread his long wings and flapped up to a height of seven or eight feet, where he commanded a comprehensive view of the meadows. a.s.sured that no peril was lurking near, he winnowed slowly along the sh.o.r.e, his legs trailing ludicrously, and dropped again to earth at the next point. The moment he touched ground and steadied himself he became once more the moveless image of a bird, as if just projected into solidity from the face of a j.a.panese screen.

At this point, however, fortune failed to smile upon his fis.h.i.+ng. For full five minutes he waited, and neither fish nor frog came within reach. Suddenly he unlimbered, and went stalking gravely up along the sloppy mud between the reeds and the shrunken water. As he went, his long neck craned alternately to one side and the other, and his eyes pierced every retreat among the rushes or the water-weeds. Sometimes he snapped up a tiny s.h.i.+ner, or a big black water-beetle, which he promptly swallowed; but he got no more prizes worth carrying back to the nest behind the hills. He went forward somewhat briskly, therefore, being in haste to reach a bit of good frogging-ground a little farther on. At length, coming to the mouth of a sluggish rivulet, he started to wade across it, not carefully observing how he set down his feet in the tangle of weeds and eel-gra.s.s. From under the tangle came a m.u.f.fled "click." With a startled squawk he lifted his wings, as something grabbed him by the toes, and held him fast. He was in the iron clutch of a muskrat trap.

That one squawk was the only sound he uttered; but his powerful wings threshed the air desperately as he strained to wrench himself free.

There was no such thing, of course, as relaxing the strong jaws of the trap, or wrenching his foot free; but he did succeed in pulling the trap up from its bed under the water-gra.s.s and dragging it out upon the sh.o.r.e to the full limit of the light chain which held it. Having accomplished this much, he was quiet for some minutes, while his fierce eyes scrutinized with fear and wonder the incomprehensible creature which had fastened upon him. After three or four frantic efforts to stab it with his redoubtable beak, he was quick to realize that this was an invulnerable foe. He seemed to realize, also, that it was an inanimate foe; for after due consideration he set himself to pulling it and feeling it with the tip of his beak, seeking some way of getting rid of it. At last, finding all this temperate effort useless, he blazed out into a frantic rage. He would jump, and tug, and flop, and spring into the air, and almost wrench the captive toes from their sockets. But all he accomplished was to make his leg ache intolerably, clear up to the thigh. At length he desisted and stood trembling, so exhausted that he could hardly keep his feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE WAS IN THE IRON CLUTCH OF A MUSKRAT TRAP."]

Meanwhile, it chanced that two boys in a birch-bark canoe were paddling up the river. The extraordinary antics of the blue heron caught their eyes. They had never heard that this most stately of birds was subject to fits; and they were filled with wonder. Paddling ash.o.r.e with all speed, they momently expected the great bird to recover himself at their approach and flop heavily away, as herons are wont to do when one seeks to observe them too closely. When near enough, however, to see what the trouble was, they were much elated, as they had long wanted to capture a blue heron and observe his habits in captivity.

As the boys ran their canoe ash.o.r.e the bird was just yielding to exhaustion. His dauntless spirit, however, was by no means broken by his misfortune. At sight of the intruders his fierce eyes hardened, and his head drew back warily between his shoulders. "Look out! Don't go near that beak!" shouted the elder boy, as the younger sprang forward to secure the coveted prize.

The warning came barely in time. That long neck had flashed forward to its full length,--and just fallen short of the enemy's stockinged leg.

"Gee whizz!" exclaimed the lad, with a nervous laugh. "If that had struck, I guess it would have gone clean through! How are we going to disarm him?"

"Watch me!" said the elder, as he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his coat from the canoe.

This effective weapon he threw over the bird's head; and in a few moments the captive was so securely trussed up that he could do nothing but eye his captors with implacable and indomitable hate. The cruel trap was removed from his toes, and their bruises carefully washed. Then very respectfully he was deposited in the bottom of the canoe, and in high elation the boys paddled off.

They had not gone far, however, when a thought struck them both at the same time, and both stopped paddling. They looked at each other with misgivings.

"Well, what is it?" asked the younger, reluctantly.

"I'm afraid," answered the elder, "it's a blame mean trick we're playing on the old bird, at this season! Eh? What do you think?"

"Perhaps so!" a.s.sented the other with a sigh, looking wistfully down at their prize. "I never thought about the young ones."

Without a word more they proceeded to loose the bonds of their prisoner.

The moment he was free he struck at them savagely; but they had been on guard against such ingrat.i.tude, and got out of the way in time. Then he sprang into the air and flapped away indignantly; while the boys stared after him wistfully, half-repenting of their gentleness.

In the Deep of the Silences