WILDCAT AND OWL IN DEATH-STRUGGLE
But in their wild and blind mêlée they overstepped the verge of the cliff, and down they went together. The 40-foot fall does not seem to have broken their clinch at all. If it did, they renewed it. But, though no fractures were sustained, the stumble doubtless stunned the cat; and there, irretrievably grappled in immortal hate, they died together of thirst and loss of blood. There at the foot of the cliff they were found; desiccated by the furnace airs of the desert, light as mummies, but unbroken; their very eyeballs dried in their sockets; the plumage of the owl practically complete, and enough fur of the wildcat’s muzzle and paws left by the moths to identify it even to those who could not recognize its unequivocal anatomy.
A ’Rastle with a Wildcat.
A ’Rastle with a Wildcat.
One of my very first experiences in the West was a midnight tussle with a fifty-four pound wildcat in a lonely cabin in the Greenhorn Mountains of Colorado. I shall never forget my horror at the sight of that huge puss on a beam over my head; for I had had a serious experience with the wildcat of the Northeast, and supposed that this fellow, who was twice as big, was likewise twice as much to be dreaded.
I did not know that the Rocky Mountain wildcat is not nearly so fierce, and that he never attacks man as does sometimes his cousin of the Maine and New Hampshire forests; and I had very slight hopes for the outcome of a struggle twice as severe as that which a furry freebooter in the Pemigewassett wilderness gave me a good many years ago. I need not have worried. The Colorado Cat was easy game; and when the last charge in my six-shooter had brought him to the floor, his life was soon ended.
That first encounter, in New Hampshire, was more than thirty years ago—years filled with roving adventure and many other things which are apt to crowd the past back into forgetfulness. But I remember it as though it had been yesterday. Small, white “exclamation-points” on my chest, with several other scars, occasionally call it to mind.
I had grown from a consumptive boy to a small but thoroughly athletic young man. Wrestling, boxing, canoeing, hunting and fishing had brought me into good condition, and every muscle was hard as wire. But for that fact, I should not be writing this; for the fight took my utmost ounce of strength. Had it come a year earlier, my grave would be in the wilderness to-day.
Of the yearly thousands who visit the great summer hotels of the White and Franconia Mountains, extremely few ever penetrate the Pemigewassett wilderness. The wild ranges wall its sides, and between them is a huge and virgin forest, full of game, dotted and seamed by lakes and brooks that swarm with trout. In this almost untrodden wild rises the east branch of the Pemigewassett, the beautiful little river which later becomes the Merrimac.
I was hunting and fishing that spring on the head waters of the east branch. My canoe swam a lovely but nameless lakelet, and my camp, roofed with birch-bark, was near the shore. There were three brooks running into the lake noisily; and at the south end the clear young river slipped silently out through the dark trees.
It was the last day of May, and still cold in that mountain bowl. I had a fat deer hung high beside my shelter; so there was meat for some time. In a little while the fishing would be very tame, for there the trout have not fully learned what a deceiver man is, and there is little sport in standing almost astride a rill, and with a five-foot willow pulling a dozen or twenty fish out of one pool. But now I knew the big fish were around, and I determined to spend the day with my rod.
By ten o’clock I was well over toward Mount Lafayette, on the largest of the brooks which came into my lake from the west; and, descending the steep banks to the bed of the stream, prepared to fish down toward camp.
The brook fell very rapidly here, in a series of short falls, at the bottom of each of which was a deep, lovely pool of water, so clear that it seemed only air with a light tinge of green. I could see pebbles ten feet below the surface, and the brown flashes of the sportive trout.
In five minutes I was landing my first fish, a game half-pounder, and others bit as fast as I could attend to them.
There was no need of covering much ground. I could have caught in fifty yards all I could eat in a week. But I kept moving homeward, taking only one or two of the largest fish from a pool and throwing back any accidental small ones.
In this way I had gone down, perhaps, half a mile, when I came to the largest pool I had found on that brook. Here it seemed likely that there might be some particularly large trout. In fact, the first one I struck seemed to be much larger than any on my string; but he snapped the hook and was gone with a splash.
I had drawn an extra hook from my box and was “ganging” it upon the line, when some impulse caused me to look up. As I did so, the tin box fell clattering upon the rocks and my rod at my feet.
The brook here had cut a narrow gorge through a ridge, and the pool at whose head I stood touched on each side the very foot of a rocky wall nearly forty feet high. I was standing on a ledge whence the brook dropped, perhaps, ten feet into the pool, and the banks were not nearly so high there. Still, I presume the tops were fifteen feet above my head.
A giant pine had fallen across the gorge from bank to bank, making a knotty bridge, which was almost over me, but a little in front; and upon that great log was the Something which had brought my heart up into my mouth with such a bump.
On the dark side of the tree, behind the stump of a huge limb, flat and motionless as you could press your hand upon the table, lay almost the last thing in the world that I desired to see there—a wildcat.
Whether it was crouching there when I came, or, as is more likely, had crawled out from the bank to surprise me, I never knew; but there it was confronting me.
I could just see the fierce glints in its eyes; and when its gaze met mine, the tip of the ears, outlined on a patch of sky, seemed to flatten. My rifle was in camp, for it was too long a walk to bring it when I wished to fish. I had not even a revolver—nothing but a keen-edged, clip-point hunting-knife, which hung in its sheath on my left hip.
I hardly dared move, but that knife I must have. Slipping my right hand cautiously behind my back, I reached far around, till at last it touched the welcome hilt, and I began to slip the sheath slowly around my belt to the right side, where the knife could be drawn less ostentatiously.
All this time I had never taken my eyes from those of the unwelcome intruder, and I kept scowling at him with a savage expression which was meant to alarm him, but which sadly flattered my real feelings.
How long we stood eyeing each other thus, I do not know. It seemed an age and must have been several minutes. Neither of us moved. He lay crouched and menacing; I stood outwardly defiant, with my hand on that precious buckhorn handle. And then my wet feet, chilled with the icy water of the brook, betrayed me. I felt a sneeze working toward the surface.
Now, when I sneeze, it is no gentle tschoo! but half a dozen or more wild and uncontrollable explosions, which never fail to bring tears to my own eyes, if they are lucky enough not to scare some unsuspecting stranger.
I struggled to choke that sneeze, to hold it back; but I might as well have tried to hold the foaming brook.
Ker-cheooo! Ker-cheooo! Ker-cheooo-oo! With each eruption my head flew down and my body shook; and as I straightened up after the fifth burst, I saw—through the mist that filled my eyes—something dark descending upon me like a great, hazy bird.
I had not once changed my position since first seeing the wildcat. He was a trifle to my left, and my left foot and shoulder were pointed up-stream. Our lives hang on such trifles as that! Now, with the trained instinct of the boxer—who has first to learn to act without stopping to think how to act—I threw my left hand up and out! Half-way to arms-length it met that furry avalanche, and broke its force. The cat landed full against my side.
Its sharp hind claws sank into my thigh, and the sharper fore claws clutched me in the pectoral muscles in front and between the shoulder-blades behind. The pain was cruel, but I had no time even to cry out. At the instant I expected to feel those merciless jaws on my neck, and that would be the last.
The wildcat knows where the jugular vein is as well as the best surgeon of them all; and it is for that that he invariably jumps. Animals killed by these cruel ambuscaders are sometimes left whole and unmangled, save for that wicked little gap at the side of the throat.
But my boxing lessons had saved me. As my left hand went out in that “straight counter,” it struck full in the throat of the cat; and with the swift inspiration of desperate men, I clutched the folds of fur there with all my might.
The cat strained hard to pull-in to me—and that was a cruel leverage it had in my own flesh. But my arm, never a weak one, was doubly strong now; and, though I could not force him from his hold, I kept his head well away from mine, which I “ducked” to increase the still unsatisfactory distance.
Then, drawing the keen six-inch blade, I drove it against his side. His left side was, of course, the one exposed to me; but we were so “mixed up” that I could take no accurate aim at his heart, and just thrust blindly and madly at that stretch of mottled fur.
Nothing will ever dim my recollection of that desperate struggle; and yet I seemed in a sort of trance. You have had nightmares, wherein some savage beast pursued you, and you slammed vain doors on him which he brushed open, and fired ineffective rifles at him whose diminished pop did not affect him in the least; and, do what you would, nothing availed against that implacable danger. So it was with me. I seemed under a spell.
Those awful claws were tearing me everywhere; that fatal head was struggling to break down my tiring arm; and the desperate thrusts of the knife with all the force of my right arm seemed not even to penetrate the tough hide. They went deep enough, as I found later, but at the moment I was sure they hardly scratched him.
Since that day I have been through a great many of the things of whose suspense we say, “They seemed eternities,” but never one, I think, that seemed so endless as that. And yet it could hardly have lasted a minute. I was growing very weak. Blood was running down in my boots, and my weary left arm was no longer rigid. My right was no longer fully under control, and once, when the knife glanced a rib, it nearly flew from my hand.
Once, too, I struck high, and the cat caught my right wrist between his savage teeth and tore out a piece. Was he invulnerable? I began actually to believe so—to fancy that, after all, it must be a hideous dream.
You may imagine from that into what a state my mind had come. But still I plied the knife, and still with cramped and trembling arm held off the creature’s jaws.
And then, on a sudden, a great wave of joy swept over me, and I yelled madly. The curving claws, set deep in my back and breast, relaxed. It was only the least bit in the world, but I could feel the exquisite pain of that slight withdrawal; and in another instant they came out altogether, and my foe fell limp upon the rocks beside me, where he never moved again.
I looked at him once; my eyes grew dim, and I fell across him.
When I recovered consciousness, we were lying in a heap, wet with our common blood. I crawled a couple of feet to the brook, and the icy water revived me, so that at last I could rise and limp about the field of our strange battle.
The cat was a mass of wounds; and as I counted the eleven fatal thrusts, I marvelled at his vitality and pluck—and very heartily respected them, too. Any one of ten of them would have finally killed him, but he had kept his hold to the very last, which had sunk deep into his heart.
And such a small beast to attack the lord of creation! I do not think he weighed over thirty pounds; but what a model of compact strength and agility! His skin was so slashed as to be absolutely unsavable; but I kept his scalp a long time, till the moths destroyed it.
As for myself, I was in little more attractive shape than he. Of my stout duck coat and trousers only the right half remained. My duck vest and heavy flannel shirt boasted little but a few shreds two-thirds of the way around my body. I was half-naked, and my breast, back, left side and left thigh were laced with deep, bleeding gashes.
There is only one thing about that day which I do not remember; and that is, how I got back that ten miles to camp. But somehow I got there; for when I awoke next morning, very weak and stiff—for of all wounds I know of none so painful as those inflicted by a cat—I was under my roof of birch bark, and a spotted scalp lay on the sand beside me.
A Tame Deer.
A Tame Deer.
Buck deer, at certain seasons, or when wounded, may be very ugly customers; and in hunting East and West, I have had several unpleasant experiences with them. The very first deer I ever killed, up in the New Hampshire mountains, came wonderfully close to killing me—after his hind leg was broken at the hip and I thought it was quite safe to close in to finish him. How he literally “wiped the ground” with me!
Others of his kind have given me trouble and danger in varying degrees, and in a variety of ways; and I have known several persons killed by them. But the “closest call” a deer ever gave me, and one of the most terrible struggles in all my hunting and wandering, befell me in the heart of the city of Los Angeles; and the hero was a “tame” buck.
It was many years ago, at a time when my passion for pets, always strong, had unusual opportunities for gratification in one of the moss-gathering intervals of a usually rolling stone. Behind the house (where a half-million dollar block stands to-day) was a good-sized yard, for a city lot, well shaded with eucalyptus trees, and with a substantial shed. Here was plenty of room for pets, and we acquired a variety of them.
First in our affection was my precious old cat Beauty, which had come with the family from Ohio. There was also a horse, which boarded at the livery stable; and a fine Danish hound that had adopted us. This did very well for a while. But during a vacation run over New Mexico, I wounded a young eagle; and, seeing that his wing would soon heal under proper care, I brought him home and kept him in a leash on the back porch, where he throve admirably.
Then someone presented me with a barn-owl, and he kept the eagle company. Rabbits have always pleased me; and presently I made some hutches, and in time had them peopled with a dozen rabbits and guinea-pigs. In a cage in my study lived a couple of handsome rattlesnakes; and one day I brought home in a slatted box a tiny wildcat—at which a patient wife cried:
“Don’t get anything more, Charlie! We can’t move now without stepping on a pet; and they are too much care for me, with you gone at the office all day and almost all night!”
But in spite of herself she grew very fond of the wildcat baby, which would lie in her lap and purr with the most ridiculously disproportionate voice. It could hardly have been a month old; and had I been the hunter who found it in the Sierra Madre, it should never have been taken from its fierce mother at such an age—for it had not been weaned, evidently.
Its body was not as large as that of a lean house-cat, but its legs were quite one-half longer, so that it had rather the appearance of being on stilts—and very uncertain, wobbly ones, too. Its feet were twice the size of Beauty’s, and its voice, in growling, was so heavy and so savage that one could scarce believe it issued from that ungainly little frame.
It was very gentle with its mistress, purred sonorously whenever she petted it, and went stumbling all over the house at her heels. Nor was it hostile to the young lady who completed our family, not half so afraid of Beauty as Beauty was of this wild cousin. But with me it would have nothing to do. As I was then city editor of the morning newspaper, and was very little at home, it evidently looked upon me as an interloper, and at a glance of me would snarl and show fight as sincerely as a grown lynx. And it was an enemy not altogether to be laughed at, as there are still scars to testify.
Once it climbed up and hid among the springs of my bed, and the heavy buck gloves I put on for the task of dislodging it did not save me from ugly tastes of those keen teeth and claws. Perhaps it is quite as well that Tiger did not survive his infancy, but died of congestion at four or five months old. Had he grown up, without a change of heart, he might have become troublesome.
With this much of a household on our hands, we might very reasonably have been content; and so probably should have been but for one of those “chances of a lifetime” which are always befalling the enthusiast. A fellow down in the Mexican quarter of the city had a pet deer, and, learning of my hobby, pestered me to buy—“dirt cheap, Sir!”
“No, I don’t want any deer. Couldn’t take care of him.”
“Oh, but he is such a beauty, Sir, and tame as a sheep, and $10 is nothing. Just come and look at him!”
Well, it could do no harm to go and look at a pretty animal; so I went—with a virtuous resolve not to acquire another single pet.
The result was what might have been expected. He was a beauty. There is almost nothing handsomer than a perfect Black-tail, and this was an excellent specimen—full grown, though young, with one fork on his dagger-sharp antlers, and gentle as a kitten. The first look of those liquid eyes made my resolution tremble; and when the lovely creature came and nestled his face into my vest with perfect confidence, I was lost.
I could not even wait to send an express-man for him. “Here is your $10,” said I; “and now give me a rope to lead him home.”
The rope was put around that graceful neck, and I started off in high glee. He followed me like a lamb through the back streets, paying little attention to people or wagons—for he had passed most of his life in the city—and much less abashed than his new master by the sensation we created. Once safely at home, I gave him a strong leather collar and a long steel chain, the other end of which hooked into a staple in the side of the shed.
Bonito, as we named him, seemed very content in his new home. At night he had a comfortable bed in the shed, and by day his place outside. There was plenty of alfalfa and young wheat, which we had cut for him from the rabbits’ patch, and bread and sugar from the house; and every morning my habit was to loose his chain and let him wander about the yard with me.
He had a great curiosity about the rabbits and the owl, a fair understanding with Giallo, the dog, a supreme contempt for the little wildcat—which had been transferred to a big cage in the yard and roared at us whenever we approached. As for the three human members of the family, he was hail-fellow-well-met with us all. He kept putting himself forward to be petted, delighted to be scratched behind the ears, and would rather eat from our hands than from his trough.
For five or six months Bonito was the pride of the family. He had grown very fat, and was sleek and handsome as one could wish. But with the advance of summer he turned misanthrope. He began to paw a considerable hollow by his post, and now and again stamped his hoof on the ground with that peculiarly audible rap which with wild deer is an alarm-signal sufficient to stampede a quietly grazing herd. Then he began to show some contempt for being petted, and several times pushed us away in a manner nothing short of rude.
At last I came home one night to find my wife much worked up. She had gone out that afternoon to feed Bonito and was giving him an apple, when suddenly he lowered his head and sprang at her. Luckily the sharp horns passed either side the slender waist, pinning her against the shed, but not hurting her; and with much presence of mind, instead of fainting or screaming or struggling, she scratched beneath his ears soothingly, and he at last let her escape unharmed.
“H’m! Well, don’t you go near him again,” said I. “I’ll attend to him myself, if that’s his temper;” and I forthwith procured a new chain.
Several times in the next few weeks he made lunges at me, but again would seem gentle and would enjoy a petting. Against my wife, however, he appeared to have taken a sudden grudge, and would tug on his chain at sight of her.
One Saturday she went to visit friends at the beach, and I was to follow on the half-past eight train next morning. It was four o’clock in the morning when I saw the paper to press and came home, and at seven o’clock got up to care for the pets before leaving.
When I went out to the yard, the deer was not there. The staple was torn out, and the drag of the chain enabled me to find where Bonito had jumped the fence and made off. I trailed him several blocks, and at last found him impudently grazing on a handsome lawn on Hill Street.
He did not attempt to elude me, and when I took the end of the chain he followed as meekly as you please, only stopping now and then to nibble a bit of grass by the sidewalk.
Unluckily just then I pulled out my watch. Seven-fifty! Time to hurry up—and when Don Bonito stooped to graze, I leaned back on the chain and brought him along. Five or six times this happened, and I fancied he was not quite so meek. Hungry he could not be—it was just his stupid notion to take a bite by the wayside; and my train would not wait for that. So each time that he halted, a steady but resistless pull brought him sliding forward, brace his feet as he would.
The last time I pulled there was a surprise. For an instant he held back with all his strength, and then, suddenly hunching his body like a panther, he gave a great bound at me. Losing balance at this sudden yielding of the weight, I sprawled on the sidewalk, and Bonito pounced upon me like a cat, cutting my leg with his sharp hoofs, and aiming his sharper horns at my ribs. It was as well that he had to do with no novice at catch-as-can wrestling, for without those years of keen practice I never should have come out from the next fifteen minutes—if, indeed, from the first onslaught. As it was, I clutched a horn at the first pass, within six inches of my side; and then, capturing the other, readily got my feet.
This head-lock counter-balanced his 20 pounds’ superiority in weight, but the very fact of being overpowered made him beside himself. He began to fight with inconceivable fury, twisting till he seemed like to break his neck in the effort to free his horns or get at me with his feet.
It began to appear that he had me in something like a “box.” It was equally out of the question to let him go or try to lead him farther. Every motion or snort of the infuriated animal showed that his one thought now was not escape, but revenge.
Still, confident in my muscles—like steel yet from a thirty-five-hundred-mile walk across the continent—I had no apprehensions. The only thing necessary was to take him home in such fashion that he could not hurt me; and once there, the chain would take care of him.
So I got my left arm locked in a chancery hold around his neck, my right hand still firmly holding his right horn, which worked uncomfortably close to my stomach, and thus, lifting him so that his fore feet were off the ground, I started homeward.
But there had been a reckoning without the host. The first two blocks went fairly, though in an unceasing violent struggle—rather to the scandal of the two or three passers we met, so early for Sunday morning in that quiet part of the town. But when I came with my prisoner to Fifth Street, it was with the consciousness that I was pretty well worn out, and that he, in spite of the strangle-lock, seemed to be growing fresher.
Each moment he fought with new rage and vigor, sometimes driving me against the fence, sometimes over the curb; lunging fiercely with those sinewy hind-legs, and striking wildly with the pointed fore-hoofs, whose dangerous effectiveness every hunter knows.
The way we wrestled and fought over the next six or seven hundred feet might have been amusing to bystanders, but became terrible to me. It was not for the bruises and gashes I got, nor for the breathless thumps against fences and trees, nor for the being violently thrown several times. I kept his head in chancery, and these small hurts were not much more than one expects to get in a good bout of catch-as-can with a human adversary.
As long as I could keep that deadlock on his neck I was perfectly safe from any serious injury, but the grim certainty confronted me that I could not keep it much longer. My arm began to give at his fiercest lunges, my breath and heart were alike stampeding, and I felt creeping over me the dizzy faintness of utter exhaustion. Never had wrestler given me such tussle before—though I have worked two hours “on the carpet” at a bout.
Down we went again at the last corner, and again a glancing hoof cut me as I fought back to my feet. I dropped the horn and clasped the left wrist with my right hand, drawing the arm tighter under the brute’s throat, at once to hold him surer and cut off his wind. But the broad leather collar seemed to save him. A burly fellow passed. “Help me with this deer!” I panted; but he looked at the savage struggles of Bonito and hurried on.
At the very gate the beast bore me down once more; but once more I struggled up and dragged him in. We swayed and fought along, tearing up the gravel-walks and flower-beds, and at last came to the shed. I could barely stand, and Bonito dragged me hither and yon. My eyes were hazy, and the cramped arms began to slip. Would Virginia never come? I yelled again, and just then she came running out.
“Fasten—his chains—around the post!” I had just breath to gasp; and, like the brave girl she was, she did it—in what seemed to me forever, while the deer and I fought the last bout.
“Run!” I cried, when the chain was at last secured; and when she was in the back door, I dragged Bonito to the end of his chain, loosed my hold and fell backward. I am positive that I could not have held him twenty seconds longer to save my life.
He slacked back on the tether and hurled himself forward till the steel links cracked again, and his eyes fairly started with the pressure on his throat. But the chain held, and his frantic efforts, which continued as long as I was in sight, were in vain. Had a link parted then, he would have had an easy victim. A few minutes’ breathing-spell made me over, and by a bit of good fortune I caught the next train, and reached Long Beach not far behind time—though with various large rents and blood stains on my clothing.
The next day a butcher was summoned to rid us of so dangerous a pet. He dealt Bonito a fearful blow on the forehead with a hatchet. The deer dropped as if shot, and lay motionless; and the butcher stepped forward with his knife. But like a flash the brute was on his feet again—and on his assailant, whose coat was pierced front and back by the sharp antlers. It was a remarkable chance that they had not entered his abdomen.
The butcher’s fat, rosy face turned a sickly gray. He kept his distance after that, and with a long-handled ax made thrice sure of the game before he would venture again within the radius of that chain.
Bonito dressed one hundred and fifty-six pounds—so you see he was no feather-weight for a wrestler. He was fat, and they said very good venison. At home we could not think of eating the meat of a former pet; but after his exploits, our sentiment did not go so far as to make us sorry that someone else could.
And since then I have never had an ambition to get another “tame deer.”
The Rebel Double Runner.
The Rebel Double Runner.
When I was a lad in a lonely New Hampshire village, in the memorable year of 1863, a great many fathers and uncles and older brothers were off at some fearful and dimly-comprehended distance, dressed in blue, and, as we reckoned it, fighting battles daily.
How brave they had looked one morning, as they left town, marching with fife and drum along the crazy sidewalk, and off down the “Depot Hill!”
After that, the games at school and after school took a decidedly warlike tinge. Wooden swords and muskets largely usurped the place of top and ball; and proud was the small boy whose grand-dad would lend him a real sword of 1812, or an ancient militia shako.
When the stern New Hampshire winter came on, with its sleighing and coasting and skating, military evolutions were somewhat curtailed—but not altogether. There were snow forts and snow battles; white-blocked Sumters that defied the assault of the enemy.
Patriotic feeling ran riot; and when one young school-fellow, named Tip, espoused the Southern cause for fun, and began to press our ramparts sore, gaining recruits every day by his sheer audacity, there came to be snow-balls slightly thawed and then left out over night to turn to ice—and, as a result, some dangerous casualties on the battle-field.
The very opposite of Tip in many ways was Mat Marks. Tip was restless, sometimes reckless, always full of mischief, but one of the squarest and least self-conscious of boys. His sudden “turning Rebel,” when he could hardly draft rebels enough to make the holding of our forts against them half-way interesting, was from no lack of as good patriotism as ours.
But Tip liked excitement, and was less vain than most of us; and without a second thought of any prejudice that he might excite because of this boyish enterprise, he abandoned the fort and took command of the enemy—“just to make it interesting.”
And, though he was always overwhelmingly outnumbered, interesting enough he made it for “Us Unions” before he finished.
Mat, on the other hand, while in a way as active and enterprising as Tip, was much bound to the traditions—not from any principle or understanding of them, but because he liked to be on the popular side, and at the head of it, too; for he had a remarkably good opinion of himself.
Thanks to his diplomacy, he counted more followers than any other lad in town, and was fully satisfied of the justice of his preëminence. He liked to deem himself “a born leader of men,” such as he read of; and I have often wondered, since, that we so long and so unquestioningly obeyed his smooth dictatorship. He was always “organizing”—the snow-ball battles were the outcome of his genius—and we carried out his orders with remarkable fidelity.
With the twentieth of December came a three-foot fall of snow, and in a few days it was hard packed on every highway, like a squeaky, white pavement. No more skating now—the sled was to be king for the next two months. For a few days everybody coasted, hit or miss; and the long slide swarmed like an ant-hill going crazy. But then the administrative mind of Mat began to work. Everyone sliding down hill on his own hook and straggling back at will—this was altogether too puerile and unorganized!
So Mat called a council of war.
“Say, boys,” he said, “I’ll tell you what let’s do! Instead of going higgledy-piggledy at it, like a lot of girls, let’s organize the coasting in good shape. We’ll have our rules and signals and right of way, just like a railroad, and a switch at the tannery corner so the small boys can go on to the toll-bridge, carrying supplies for the army, and the express-trains can turn off to the depot and take troops to the front.
“Then, too, I think father’ll let me have old Nell, and we can make her haul back all the sleds in a string, and let fellows have turns riding her down to meet us again. So that’ll get rid of the meanest part of it—the pulling our sleds up hill. Besides, we’re all the time having trouble with teams now; but if they all knew we were coming down in a steady string, they’d keep out of the way, and do their sledding only when the coast was clear. What do you fellows think?”
“Good enough!” “That’s the way!” “All right!” cried the crowd, in various voices, but with one mind. But when the exclamations were over, Tip tilted his sharp face a bit and said:
“Well, what are you going to do while Nell is getting down hill? Sit in the snow-drift there at the depot and rub your ears? Strikes me it’s better to turn around and climb back, and keep warm, ’stead of waiting there half an hour to freeze. And s’posing some team that didn’t know about our all comin’ down together was to get in the way? Then we’d be apt to get tangled up with each other and go to smash.”
“Huh!” retorted Mat, sharply; “I guess you’re scared. But you don’t have to join us. If the rest say to go in, I guess we can get along without you. What do you say, fellows? Shall we do it?”
“’Course we will!” was the chorus; and Mat looked triumphantly at his rival—for there was no denying that Mat reckoned as a rival, and therefore a foe, anyone who didn’t agree with him, as Tip generally did not. Tip returned the glance coolly and answered:
“Why, you fellows do as you like, of course—I ain’t bossing you. But you can count me out from any such goose-tag as that.”
“We wouldn’t have you anyhow!” cried Mat, nettled at this comparing them to a flock of geese waddling one after the other. “We don’t care to have any traitors in our crowd.”
“Yah, you old Rebel!” piped little Bill Burpee, taking his clew as usual; and several others echoed what was then the most dreadful word in our vocabulary.
“I ain’t a Rebel, and you know it!” Tip answered, warmly. “I guess my father’s fighting as hard as any of yours—and he ain’t staying home to tend grocery stores, like Mat’s!” with which parting shot he walked off scornfully and quite alone.
I can hardly understand now why we were so unjust to Tip. He had more in him than any other boy among us, was less selfish, more trustworthy and a better friend than ten Mats, and had done each of us no end of boy-kindnesses, instead of using us as cat’s-paws for his own ambition.
But just because he had “played Rebel” for a few days solely to put a little life into the war, the boys were “down on” him. His followers in that campaign we made no note of and harbored no grudge against.
Perhaps there was wounded vanity in the recollection how nearly his superior generalship had routed our superior forces. So unreasoning are early prejudices that I presume a few of us never did quite get the last grain of grudge out of our heads—unless, perhaps, fifteen years later, when Mat was clerking in his father’s store, and word came of the death of Capt. Tip in Arizona. He was slain by the Apaches after an heroic fight which saved an immigrant party till the arrival of troops enough to scatter the red fiends.
Well, Mat’s plan progressed famously. A small army of us, with brooms and shovels, worked over that mile and a half of road till the coast was in such good shape as no one ever dreamed of before.
The weather stayed obstinately cold; so, under Mat’s direction, we brought water by the bucketful and wet down the safer parts of the slide. There was some friction about this, for the older people objected to so much glare ice; but Mat compromised by not wetting the street crossings, and only a narrow track at the side of the road, so that sleighs had plenty of room without encroaching on our slide.
At the tannery corner we made a crescent of hard-packed snow, with sloping concavity, which rendered it rather easier to turn that dangerous angle. It was like the raised rail on the outside of the railway curve, or the “saucer-edge” of an automobile race-track.
And then came the marshalling of the clans. Our embryo Napoleon, of course, was commander-in-chief, and his pride, the double-runner “Avalanche,” led the line. There were in those days but half a dozen other double-runners in town. These were owned by young men. Mat’s was the only one in “our crowd.” It was a very fancy affair for then and there.
Right-hand-man Hunt was privileged to manage the rear, and the coveted remaining seats were occupied by guests of passing invitation.
It was no small social power to control a double-runner, and Mat made the most of it, giving rides to all his friends with great princeliness. But I remember that we never saw on Mat’s “traverse” any of the urchins from the lower end of the village—they had no “influence.”
Behind the “Avalanche” came sleds of all sorts and sizes. As for Tip, no one had seen him for several days. He lived up on the other hill—a hill even steeper than Dolloff’s, but coming in with such an ugly turn at the engine-house that no one coasted there since big Ned Green broke his neck on a wood-pile around the bend.
The great Saturday came for the formal inauguration of the Cannonball Railroad. Sixty-odd boys were gathered at the top of Dolloff’s Hill. Some girls were there, too, with their high, flat-runnered sleds, upon which we looked with supreme scorn. Kitty White and Annie Waters and May Thurston were comfortably tucked up on the cushioned seat behind Mat on his double-runner; and Hunt was holding back on the tail-board till the signal.
“All ready—go!” yelled Mat. Hunt sprang to his seat, and the sled slipped away, gaining momentum swiftly. Charlie White flung himself on his long cutter and was at its heels; and one after another, in continuous line, the whole array of boys on their sleds went sweeping down the hill.
Just as the last of us were whizzing by the engine-house, there was a shrill yell, and a dark flash from the other arm of the “Y” of the roads shot alongside in a swirl of snow-flower, and was past almost before anyone could crack a wink.
All we were sure of was that Tip and a party had gone by us, but how, or on what, no one knew. Anyhow, it was just like him. No one but Tip could have turned that lopsided corner in that way, and grazed safely within two feet of us. And one after another of the brown line ahead, we could see this astounding meteor picking up and passing them all.
Mat was right on the town bridge, steering his grandest to cut a fine curve through the square, when he caught that odd singing of tempered runners. Before he could turn his head, Tip streaked by without a glance, doubled the corner with a beautiful swing, and was out of sight on the next pitch when the “Avalanche” turned into the square.
Tip on a double-runner! and one with wings, too, to judge by its speed! And Lou Berry and Kate Morris and Amy Belle and that pauper Okey boy with him, and that big Brown behind—it was altogether too much! When we got to the bottom of Depot Hill, Tip and his party were starting back, dragging the new craft. It was a very heavy double-runner, with a long, springy plank of ash, set rather low. There was no paint on runners or deck, but everything about the sandpapered wood had a clipper look, and the runners were shod with steel rods of an odd spring.
“Where’d ye get it, Tip?” “Ain’t it a whaler?” “Lemme go down once with you, Tip!” cried such of the boys as could catch up—which was not so difficult, as old Nell was dragging our sleds. Tip trudged on, answering composedly:
“Oh, Mr. Brown and I got it fixed up. ’Course you can go, one at a time—we’ve got room for just one more.”
But just then Mat—whose heavy sled went farther than our light ones—overtook us. No doubt he felt pretty sore over being so egregiously beaten at his own game; and his look was anything but amiable as he observed, loudly and in his most scornful tone: “Huh! We feel pretty smart with a Rebel double-runner, don’t we?”
Kate and Lou flushed up, and Brown stuck out his lip contemptuously, but Tip only answered, drily:
“No-o, not so awful smart—just smart enough for what we need.”
This was fuel to the fire. Mat, who was much the heavier of the two, stepped forward; and very likely there would have been a scene, except that the good old minister just then stopped his sleigh for a chat with some friends, the boys. But Mat had clinched a nickname, and Tip’s turnout became in every mouth “The Rebel Double-runner.”
Nor did it stop there. An organized movement—in which Mat was far too shrewd to let himself be seen, leaving it to his younger followers—was made to cut (boycott, as we would say nowadays) everyone who had anything to do with Tip.
Brown evidently didn’t borrow much trouble about the scorn of boys so much younger than himself; and whatever Tip may have felt, he said nothing.
But Kate and Lou felt it keenly, for even the sisters of the camp were enlisted to make things unpleasant for “all who gave aid and comfort to Rebels.” But, as they were loyal and plucky girls, they stuck to their friend in a fashion that was rather heroic, considering the heat and the meanness of youthful partisanship. I trust that for the many shabby turns done them they found some recompense in the regularity with which, day after day and many times a day, they whizzed past their envious persecutors. For Tip had left no gap in his plans. The Rebel double-runner was safe to win every time—thanks partly to its superior construction, partly to the dangerous hill on which it got its headway, and partly to the tremendous send-off given it by that hatefully muscular Brown.
Besides, Tip had a perfect genius as a steerer—the genius of effort and fixity, which counts oftener than any other kind. He seemed afraid of nothing, because he really “saw his way through.” He had studied that slide in every inch, and knew how to give his sled every advantage of it.
It was an aggravation almost beyond endurance to have them flash by us so easily every time; but for all Mat’s efforts and schemes and our wild jockeying, they continued to do it. If the continued triumph of the Rebel double-runner was aggravating to us, it was gall and wormwood to Mat. The thing became a town joke; and older folks, who did not share our grudge against Tip nor our awe of our “Napoleon,” poked all manner of fun.
Suave, self-satisfied, Mat grew glum and snappish. Those of us who ventured to ride with Tip—and it must be confessed that our patriotism was not always proof against the temptation—were made to feel the weight of Mat’s displeasure. Our “leader of men” had not quite learned to lead himself.
As we trudged up with our sleds from the depot one afternoon, we caught sight of Tip’s outfit whisking around the tannery corner and bearing down like a streak of dark lightning.
Mat was ahead, talking hard to young Burpee, who had a long red-bark switch in his hand. Just as the flying traverse was close, the young imp flung his stick down across the road.
Quick as thought we saw the act—and that Tip saw it, too. He slid back, with feet braced hard on the crosspiece, and swung the sled a trifle to the right.
He was pale—but not half so white as Mat, who stood glaring at him like one fascinated. It was right on the last bridge, over the big fall—that old wooden bridge with its crazy railing!
We were too horror-struck even to cry out, and there was no sound from the white faces on the sled. I can remember yet how the great falls roared, as out of a dead hush; how Tip’s teeth showed, and that the steering-rope was sunk deep in his wrists. How many things made themselves seen and felt in that instant!
The sled struck the slender switch exactly square. We looked to see its occupants fly off into space; but, though Tip was snapped forward until his knees bruised his face, those wiry legs saved him and the rest, who were half piled upon him.
The flying ends of the switch told the story. Tip had steered upon the slenderer end, and the swift, high-tempered runners had chopped it in two, as was his hope, and without too great a shock.
Had the switch resisted never so little! It seemed to us—and does to me yet—almost a miracle of escape. But for Tip’s instant wit, the whole party would have broken their necks on the hill, or crashed through the rail to the falls.
That day broke the back of the Cannonball Railroad. No one would so much as look at Burpee; but we felt that the responsibility rested further back.
Of course, Mat had not told him to throw the switch, and doubtless made himself believe that he had no blame in the matter. But the rest of us—well, even boys sometimes know how to read between the lines.
Tip never opened his month about the matter, and promptly stopped any attempted reference to it. He had plenty of companions now, and treated them in his square-toed boy way, as though nothing had ever happened.
A week after the switch episode, the crowd, including Tip, was straggling up the hill as Mat and his few remaining satellites came down on the “Avalanche.” Just as they reached the grist-mill, a loaded wood-sledge stalled at the tannery corner—the snow was soft that day. The sled was, for the same reason, not going half so fast as usual, but quite fast enough. Seeing the dangerous passage thus blockaded, Mat began to get panicky, and the sled wobbled.
“He’s going to jump!” exclaimed someone. “Don’t!”
Tip flung his sled-rope to me. “Hold to her, Mat!” he yelled, standing at the very edge of the slide and balanced, catlike. But Mat did not hold on. The “Avalanche” slewed to one side, and he leaped and went plowing and rolling fifty feet in the slush. Almost as he struck the road, Tip had flung himself headlong upon the steering-seat and caught the lines.
He was just in time to “snub” the front sled before it could “turn cross” and make a wreck; and, steering through the narrow space between the wood-sledge and the bridge-rail, he fetched up safely with the traverse and its four frightened boys on the grade that climbs to Water Street.
That settled the business. From that day out, I think no one was ever heard to mention anything that sounded like “Rebel double-runner.” It was “Tip’s Tornado,” and there wasn’t a boy in town, except one, but was glad to ride on it—or to follow Tip in anything. It was the quietest of victories, but complete.