During the next two or three days Mahng's voice was frequently to be heard, apparently calling his wife. Sometimes it was a mournful, long-drawn cry—"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo"—that might have been heard a mile away—a cry that seemed the very essence of loneliness, and that went right down where you lived and made you feel like a murderer. And sometimes he broke into a wild peal of laughter, as if he hoped that that might better serve to call her back to him.
His children had gone south some time before. They had seemed anxious to see the world. Perhaps, too, they had dreaded the approach of colder weather more than the older birds, who had become somewhat seasoned by previous autumns. Anyhow, they had taken the long trail toward the Gulf of Mexico, and now that his wife was gone Mahng was entirely alone. At last he seemed to make up his mind that he might as well follow them, and one afternoon, as he was swimming aimlessly about, I saw him suddenly dash forward, working his wings with all their might, beating the water at every stroke, and throwing spray like a side-wheeler. Slowly—for his body was heavy, and his wings were rather small for his size—slowly he lifted himself from the water, all the time rushing forward faster and faster. He couldn't have made it if he hadn't had plenty of sea-room, but by swinging round and round in long, wide circles he managed to rise little by little till at last he was clear of the tree-tops. He passed right over my head as he stood away to the south—his long neck stretched far out in front, his feet pointing straight back beyond the end of his short tail, and his wings beating the air with tremendous energy. How they did whizz! He made almost as much noise as a train of cars. He laughed as he went by, and you would have said that he was in high spirits; but before he disappeared that lonely, long-drawn cry came back once more—"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo."
In the course of his winter wanderings through the South he happened to alight one day on a certain wild pond down in Mississippi, and there he found another loon—a widow whose former husband had lost his life the previous summer under rather peculiar circumstances.
Beside a small lake in Minnesota there lives an old Dutchman who catches fish with empty bottles. On any calm, still day you may see a lot of them floating upright in the water, all tightly corked, and each with the end of a fishing-line tied around its neck. They seem very decorous and well-behaved, but let a fish take one of the hooks and begin to pull, and immediately that particular bottle turns wrong end up, and acts as if it had taken a drop too much of its own original contents. Then the Dutchman paddles out in his little scow, and perhaps by the time he has hauled in his fish and re-baited the hook another bottle is excitedly standing on its head. But never before nor since have any of them behaved as wildly as the one that a loon got hold of.
The loon—not Mahng, you understand, but the first husband of his new acquaintance—had dived in search of his dinner, and the first thing he saw that looked as if it might be good to eat was the bait on one of the Dutchman's hooks. He swallowed it, of course, and for the next five minutes he went charging up and down that pond at a great rate, followed by a green glass monster with the name of a millionnaire brewer blown in its side. Sometimes he was on the surface, and sometimes he was under it; but wherever he went that horrible thing was close behind him, pulling so hard that the sharp cord cut the corners of his mouth till it bled. Once or twice he tried to fly, but the line caught his wing and brought him down again. When he dived, it tangled itself around his legs and clogged the machinery; and when he tried to shout, the hook in his throat would not let him do anything more than cough. The Dutchman got him at last, and eventually Mahng got his widow, as you shall see.
She had her children to take care of, and for a time she was very busy, but after a few weeks they flew away to the south, as Mahng's had done, and she was free to go where she liked and do what she pleased. For a while she stayed where she was, like a sensible person. Minnesota suited her very well, and she was in no hurry to leave. But, of course, she could not stay on indefinitely, for some frosty night the lake would freeze over, and then she could neither dive for fish nor rise upon the wing. A loon on ice is about as helpless as an oyster. And so at last she, too, went south. She travelled by easy stages, and had a pleasant journey, with many a stop, and many a feast in the lakes and rivers along the route. I should like to know, just out of curiosity, how many fish found their way down her capacious gullet during that pilgrimage through Illinois and Kentucky and Tennessee.
Well, no matter about that. The Mississippi pond was in sight, and she was just slanting down toward the water, when a hunter fired at her from behind a clump of trees. His aim was all too true, and she fell headlong to the ground, with a broken wing dangling helplessly at her side.
Now, as you probably know, a loon isn't built for running. There is an old story, one which certainly has the appearance of truth, to the effect that when Nature manufactured the first of these birds she forgot to give him any legs at all, and that he had started off on the wing before she noticed her mistake. Then she picked up the first pair that came to hand and threw them after him. Unfortunately they were a misfit, and, what was, perhaps, still worse, they struck his body in the wrong place. They were so very short and so very far aft that, although he could stand nearly as straight as a man, it was almost impossible for him to move about on them. When he had to travel on land, which he always avoided as far as he could, he generally shoved himself along on his breast, and often used his wings and his bill to help himself forward. All his descendants are just like him, so you can see that the widow's chances were pretty small, with the hunter bursting out of the bushes, and a broad strip of beach between her and the friendly pond.
But she was a person of resource and energy, and in this great emergency she literally rose to the occasion, and did something that she had never done before in all her life, and probably will never do again. The astonished hunter saw her lift herself until she stood nearly upright, and then actually run across the beach toward the water. She was leaning forward a trifle, her long neck was stretched out, her two short legs were trotting as fast as they could go, and her one good wing was wildly waving in a frantic endeavor to get on. It was a sight that very few people have ever seen, and it would have been comical if it hadn't been a matter of life and death. The hunter was hard after her, and his legs were a yard long, while hers were only a few inches, so it was not surprising that he caught her just as she reached the margin. She wriggled out of his grasp and dashed on through the shallow water, and he followed close behind. In a moment he stooped and made another grab at her, and this time he got his arms around her body and pinned her wings down against her sides. But he had waded out a little too far, and had reached the place where the bottom suddenly shelves off from fifteen inches to seventy-two. His foot slipped, and in another moment he was splashing wildly about in the water, and the loon was free.
A broken wing is not necessarily as serious a matter as you might suppose. The cold water kept the inflammation down, and it seemed as if all the vital forces of her strong, healthy body set to work at once to repair the damage. If any comparative anatomist ever gets hold of the widow and dissects her, he will find a curious swelling in the principal bone of her left wing, like a plumber's join in a lead pipe, and he will know what it means. It is the place where Nature soldered the broken pieces together. And it was while Nature was engaged in this soldering operation that Mahng arrived and began to cultivate the widow's acquaintance.
But speaking of Mahng's wedding-garment reminds me that I haven't told you about his winter dress. His back and wings were very dark-brown, and his breast and under-parts were white. His head and the upper portion of his neck were black; his bill was black, or blackish, and so were his feet. His coat was very thick and warm, and his legs were feathered right down to the heel-joint. More than five feet his wings stretched from tip to tip, and he weighed at least twelve pounds, and would be still larger before he died.
As to his nuptial finery, its groundwork was much the same, but its trimmings were different and were very elegant. White spots appeared all over his back and the upper surfaces of his wings, some of them round, and some square. They were not thrown on carelessly, but were arranged in gracefully curving lines, and they quite changed his appearance, especially if one were as near him as one is supposed to be during a courting. His spring neckwear, too, was in exceedingly good taste, for he put on a sort of collar of very narrow vertical stripes, contrasting beautifully with the black around and between them. Higher up on his neck and head the deep black feathers gleamed and shone in the sunlight with brilliant irridescent tints of green and violet. He was a very handsome bird.
And now everything was going north. The sun was going north, the wind was going north, the birds were going, and summer herself was sweeping up from the tropics as fast as ever she could travel. Mahng was getting very restless. A dozen times a day he would spread his wings and beat the air furiously, dashing the spray in every direction, and almost lifting his heavy body out of the water. But the time was not yet come, and presently he would fold his pinions and go back to his courting.
Do you think he was very inconstant? Do you blame him for not being more faithful to the memory of the bird who was shot at his side only a few months before? Don't be too hard on him. What can a loon do when the springtime calls and the wind blows fresh and strong, when the new strong wine of life is coursing madly through his veins, and when his dreams are all of the vernal flight to the lonely northland, where the water is cold and the fish are good, and where there are such delightful nesting-places around the marshy ponds?
But how did his new friend feel about it? Would she go with him? Ah! Wouldn't she? Had not she, too, put on a wedding-garment just like his? And what was she there for, anyhow, if not to be wooed, and to find a mate, and to fly away with him a thousand miles to the north, and there, beside some lonely little lake, brood over her eggs and her young? Her wing was gaining strength all the time, and at last she was ready. You should have heard them laugh when the great day came and they pulled out for Michigan—Mahng a little in the lead, as became the larger and stronger, and his new wife close behind. There had been nearly a week of cooler weather just before the start, which had delayed them a little, but now the south wind was blowing again, and over and over it seemed to say,
Over the fresh fields, green with the young wheat; over the winding rivers and the smiling lakes; over the—shut your eyes, and dream a little while, and see if you can imagine what it was like. Does it make you wish you were a loon yourself? Never mind; some day, perhaps, we too shall take our wedding-journeys in the air; not on feathered pinions, but with throbbing engines and whizzing wheels, and with all the power of steam or electricity to lift us and bear us onward. We shall skim the prairies and leap the mountains, and roam over the ocean like the wandering albatross. To-day we shall breathe the warm, spicy breath of the tropic islands, and to-morrow we shall sight the white gleam of the polar ice-pack. When the storm gathers we shall mount above it, and looking down we shall see the lightning leap from cloud to cloud, and the rattling thunder will come upward, not downward, to our ears. When the world below is steeped in the shadows of coming night, we shall still watch the sunset trailing its glories over the western woods and mountains; and when morning breaks we shall be the first to welcome the sunrise as it comes rushing up from the east a thousand miles an hour. The wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and strong, and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can set the live blood dancing as it will dance and tingle up there above the clouds. And riding on the air, alone with the roaring engines that have become for the time a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth is really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it—yes, as God and His angels see it—this old earth, on which we have lived for so many thousand years, and yet have never seen.
But, after all, the upper heavens will not be home; and some day, as we shoot northward, or southward, or eastward, or westward, we shall see beneath us the spot that is to be for us the best and dearest place in all the world, and dropping down out of the blue we shall find something that is even better than riding on the wings of the wind. That was what happened to Mahng and his wife, for one spring evening, as they came rushing over the pine-tops and the maples and birches, they saw the Glimmerglass just ahead. The water lay like polished steel in the fading light, and the brown ranks of the still leafless trees stood dark and silent around the shores. It was very quiet, and very, very lonely; and the lake and the woods seemed waiting and watching for something. And into that stillness and silence the loons came with shouting and laughter, sweeping down on a long slant, and hitting the water with a splash. The echoes awoke and the Glimmerglass was alive, and summer had come to the northland.
They chose a place where the shore was low and marshy, and there, only two or three yards from the water's edge, they built a rude nest of grass and weeds and lily-pads. Two large greenish eggs, blotched with dark-brown, lay in its hollow; and the wife sat upon them week after week, and covered them with the warm feathers of her broad, white breast. Once in a while she left them long enough to stretch her wings in a short flight, or to dive in search of a fish, but she was never gone very long. It was a weary vigil that she kept, but she sat there in daylight and darkness, through sunshine and storm, till at last the day came when there were four loons instead of two at the Glimmerglass.
The chicks were very smart and active, and they took to the water almost as soon as they were out of the shell, swimming and diving as if they had been accustomed to it for weeks instead of hours. In some ways, however, they required a good deal of care. For one thing, their little stomachs were not quite equal to the task of assimilating raw fish, and the parents had to swallow all their food for them, keep it down till it was partly digested, and then pass it up again to the hungry children. It made a good deal of delay, and it must have been very unpleasant, but it seemed to be the only practicable way of dealing with the situation. I am glad to say that it did not last very long, for by the time they were two weeks old the young loons were able to take their fish and reptiles and insects at first hand.
When they first arrived the chicks were covered all over with stiff down, of a dark, sooty gray on their backs, and white underneath. But this did not last long, either. The first feathers soon appeared, and multiplied rapidly. I can't say that the young birds were particularly handsome, for even when their plumage was complete it was much quieter and duller of hue than their parents'. But they were fat and plump, and I think they thoroughly enjoyed life, especially before they discovered that there were enemies as well as friends in the world. That was a kind of knowledge that could not be avoided very long, however. They soon learned that men, and certain other animals such as hawks and skunks, were to be carefully shunned; and you should have seen them run on the water whenever a suspicious-looking character hove in sight. Their wings were not yet large enough for flying, but they flapped them with all their might, and scampered across the Glimmerglass so fast that their little legs fairly twinkled, and they actually left a furrow in the water behind them. But the bottom of the lake was really the safest refuge, and if a boat or a canoe pressed them too closely they would usually dive below the surface, while the older birds tried to lure the enemy off in some other direction by calling and shouting and making all sorts of demonstrations.
Generally these tactics were successful, but not always. Once some boys cornered the whole family in a small, shallow bay, where the water was not deep enough for diving; and before they could escape one of the youngsters was driven up onto the beach. He tried to hide behind a log, but he was captured and earned off, and I wish I had time to tell you of all the things that happened to him before he was finally killed and eaten by a dog. It was pretty tough on the old birds, as well as on him, but they still had one chick left, and you can't expect to raise all your children as long as bigger people are so fond of kidnapping and killing them.
Not all the people who came to see them were bent on mischief, however. There was a party of girls and boys, for instance, who camped beside the Glimmerglass for a few weeks, and who liked to follow them around the lake in a row-boat and imitate their voices, just for the fun of making them talk back. One girl in particular became so accomplished in the loon language that Mahng would often get very much excited as he conversed with her, and would sometimes let the boat creep nearer and nearer until they were only a few rods apart. And then, all of a sudden, he would duck his head and go under, perhaps in the very middle of a laugh. The siren was getting a little too close. Her intentions might possibly be all right, but it was just as well to be on the safe side.
The summer was nearly gone, and now Mahng did something which I fear you will strongly disapprove. I didn't want to tell you about it, but I suppose I must. Two or three male loons passed over the Glimmerglass one afternoon, calling and shouting as they went, and he flew up and joined them, and came back no more that summer. It looked like a clear case of desertion, but we must remember that he had stood by his wife all through the trying period of the spring and early summer, and that the time was at hand when the one chick that was left would go out into the world to paddle his own canoe, and when she would no longer need his help in caring for a family of young children. But you think he might have stayed with her, anyhow? Well, so do I; I'm sorry he didn't. They say that his cousins, the Red-throated Loons, marry for life, and live together from the wedding-day till death, and I don't see why he couldn't have done as well as they. But it doesn't seem to be the custom among the Great Northern Divers. Mahng was only following the usual practice of his kind, and if his first wife had not been shot it is likely that they would have separated before they had gone very far south. And yet it does not follow that the marriage was not a love-match. If you had seen them at their housekeeping I think you would have pronounced him a very good husband and father. Perhaps the conjugal happiness of the spring and early summer was all the better for a taste of solitude during the rest of the year.
As I said, the time was near when the chick would strike out for himself. He soon left his mother, and a little later she too started for the Gulf of Mexico. Summer was over, and the Glimmerglass was lonelier than ever.
Mahng came back next spring, and of course he brought a wife with him. But was she the same wife who had helped him make the Glimmerglass ring with his shouting twelve months before? Well, I—I don't quite know. She looked very much like her, and I certainly hope she was the same bird. I should like to believe that they had been reunited somewhere down in Texas or Mississippi or Louisiana, and that they had come back together for another season of parental cares and joys. But when I consider the difficulties in the way I cannot help feeling doubtful about it. The two birds had gone south at different times and perhaps by different routes. Before they reached the lower Mississippi Valley they may have been hundreds of miles apart. Was it to be reasonably expected that Mahng, when he was ready to return, would search every pond and stream from the Cumberland to the Gulf? And is it likely that, even if he had tried for weeks and weeks, he could ever have found his wife of the previous summer? His flight was swift and his sight keen, and his clarion voice rang far and wide over the marshes; but it is no joke to find one particular bird in a region covering half a dozen States. If they had arranged to come north separately, and meet at the Glimmerglass, there would not have been so many difficulties in the way, but they didn't do that. Anyhow, Mahng brought a wife home. That much, at least, is established. They set to work at once to build a nest and make ready for some new babies; but, alas! there was little parental happiness or responsibility in store for them that year.
If you had been there you might have seen them swimming out from shore one bright, beautiful spring morning, when the sun had just risen, and the woods and waters lay calm and peaceful in the golden light, fairer than words can tell. They were after their breakfast, and presently they dived to see what was to be had. The light is dim down there in the depths of the Glimmerglass, the weeds are long and slimy, and the mud of the bottom is black and loathsome. But what does that matter? One can go back whenever one pleases. A few quick, powerful strokes will take you up into the open air, and you can see the woods and the sky. Aha! There is a herring, his scales shining like silver in the faint green light that comes down through the water. And there is a small salmon trout, with his gray-brown back and his golden sides. A fish for each of us.
The loons darted forward at full speed; but the two fish made no effort to escape, and did not even wriggle when the long, sharp bills closed upon them. They were dead, choked to death by the fine threads of a gill-net. And now those same threads laid hold of the loons themselves, and a fearful struggle began.
Mahng and his wife did not always keep their wings folded when they were under water. Sometimes they used them almost as they did in flying, and just now they had need of every muscle in their bodies. How their pinions lashed the water, and how their legs kicked and their long necks writhed, and how the soft mud rose in clouds and shut out the dim light! But the harder they fought the more tightly did the net grapple them, winding itself round and round their bodies, and soon lashing their wings down against their sides. Expert divers though they were, the loons were drowning. There was a ringing in their ears and a roaring in their heads, and the very last atoms of oxygen in their lungs were almost gone. Death was drawing very near, and the bright, sunshiny world where they had been so happy a moment before, the world to which they had thought they could return so quickly and easily, seemed a thousand miles away. One last effort, one final struggle, and if that failed there would be nothing more to do but go to sleep forever.
Fortunately for Mahng, his part of the net had been mildewed, and much of the strength had gone out of the linen threads. He was writhing and twisting with all his might, and suddenly he felt something give. One of the rotten meshes had torn apart. He worked with redoubled energy, and in a moment another thread gave way, and then another, and another. A second more and he was free. Quick, now, before the last spark goes out! With beating wings and churning paddles he fairly flew up through the green water toward the light, and on a sudden he shot out into the air, panting and gasping, and staring wildly around at the blue sky, and the quiet woods, and the smiling Glimmerglass. And how royally beautiful was the sunshine, and how sweet was the breath of life!
But his mate was not with him, and a few hours later the fisherman found in his net the lifeless body of a drowned loon.
Mahng went north. He had thought that his spring flight was over and that he would go no farther, but now the Glimmerglass was no longer home, and he spread his wings once more and took his way toward the Arctic Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech and birch; over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with its cranberry marshes, its tangles of spruce and cedar, and its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack; over the sandy ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and out on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine was bright; the wind was fresh and cool, and the billows rolled and tumbled as if they were alive and were having a good time together. Together—that's the word. They were together, but Mahng was alone; and he wasn't having a good time at all. He wanted a home, and a nest, and some young ones, but he didn't find them that year, though he went clear to Hudson Bay, and looked everywhere for a mate. There were loons, plenty of them, but they had already paired and set up housekeeping, and he found no one who was in a position to halve his sorrows and double his joys.
Something attracted his attention one afternoon when he was swimming on a little lake far up in the Canadian wilderness—a small red object that kept appearing and disappearing in a very mysterious fashion among the bushes that lined the beach. Mahng's bump of curiosity was large and well developed, and he gave one of his best laughs and paddled slowly in toward the shore. I think he had a faint and utterly unreasonable hope that it might prove to be what he was looking and longing for, though he knew very well that no female loon of his species ever had red feathers—nor a male, either, for that matter. It was a most absurd idea, and his dreams, if he really had them, were cut short by the report of a shotgun. A little cloud of smoke floated up through the bushes, and a charge of heavy shot peppered the water all around him. But if Mahng was curious he was also quick to take a hint. He had heard the click of the gun-lock, and before the leaden hail could reach him he was under water. His tail feathers suffered a little, but otherwise he was uninjured, and he did not come to the surface again till he was far away from that deceitful red handkerchief.
The summer was an entire failure, and after a while Mahng gave it up in despair, and started south much earlier than usual. At the Straits of Mackinac he had another narrow escape, for he came very near killing himself by dashing head first against the lantern of a lighthouse, whose brilliant beams, a thousand times brighter than the light which had lured his first wife to her death, had first attracted and then dazzled and dazed him. Fortunately he swerved a trifle at the last moment, and though he brushed against an iron railing, lost his balance, and fell into the water, there were no bones broken and no serious damage done.
The southland, as everybody knows, is the only proper place for a loon courtship. There, I am pleased to say, Mahng found a new wife, and in due time he brought her up to the Glimmerglass. That was only last spring, and there is but one more incident for me to relate. This summer has been a happy and prosperous one, but there was a time when it seemed likely to end in disaster before it had fairly begun.
Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow, shallow pond. I believe I mentioned it when I was telling you about the Beaver. One afternoon Mahng had flown across to this pond, and as he was swimming along close to the shore he put his foot into a beaver-trap, and sprung it. Of course he did his best to get away, but the only result of his struggling was to work the trap out into deeper and deeper water until he was almost submerged. He made things almost boil with the fierce beating of his wings, but it was no use; he might better have saved his strength. He quieted down at last and lay very still, with only his head and neck out of water, and there he waited two mortal hours for something to happen.
Meanwhile his wife sat quietly on her eggs—there were three of them this year—and drowsed away the warm spring afternoon. By and by she heard a tramping as of heavy feet approaching, and glancing between the tall grasses she saw, not a bear nor a deer, but something far worse—a man. She waited till he was within a few yards, and then she jumped up, scuttled down to the water as fast as she could go, and dived as if she was made of lead. The trapper glanced after her with a chuckle.
"Seems pretty badly scared," he said to himself, but his voice was not unkindly. His smile faded as he stood a moment beside the nest, looking at the eggs, and thinking of what would some day come forth from them. He was a solitary old fellow, with never a wife nor a child, nor a relation of any kind. His life in the woods was just what he had chosen for himself, and he would not have exchanged it for anything else in the world; but sometimes the loneliness of it came over him, and he wished that he had somebody to talk to. And now, looking at those eggs, and thinking of the fledglings that were coming to the loons, he wondered how it would seem if he had some children of his own. Pretty soon he glanced out on the lake again, and saw Mahng's wife sitting quietly on the water, just out of range.
"Hope she won't stay away till they get cold," he thought, and went on his way across the swamp. The loon watched him till he passed out of sight, and then she swam in to the beach and pushed herself up her narrow runway to her old place. The eggs were still warm.
Half an hour later the trapper stepped out of the bushes beside the pond, and caught sight of Mahng's head sticking out of the water. He was considerably astonished, but he promptly laid hold of the chain and drew bird, trap, and all up onto the bank, and then he sat down on a log and laughed till the echoes went flying back and forth across the pond. Plastered with mud, dripping wet, and with his left leg fast in the big steel killing-machine, Mahng was certainly a comical sight. All the fight was soaked out of him, and he lay prone upon the ground and waited for the trapper to do what he pleased. But the trapper did nothing—only sat on his log, and presently forgot to laugh. He was thinking of the sitting loon whom he had disturbed a little while before. This was probably her mate, and again there came over him a vague feeling that life had been very good to these birds, and had given them something which he, the man, had missed. He was growing old. A few more seasons and there would be one trapper less in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp; and he would die without—well, what was the use of talking or thinking about it? But the loons would hatch their young, and care for them and protect them until they were ready to go out into the world, and then they would send them away to the south. A few weeks later they would follow, and next spring they would come back and do it all over again. That is—they would if he didn't kill them.
He rose from his log, smiling again at the abject look with which Mahng watched him, and putting one foot on each of the two heavy steel springs, he threw his weight upon them and crushed them down. Mahng felt the jaws relax, and suddenly he knew that he was free. The strength came back with a rush to his weary limbs, and he sprang up, scrambled down the bank and into the water, and was gone. A few minutes later he reappeared far down the pond, and rising on the wing he flew away with a laugh toward the Glimmerglass.
He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder that he distanced all his relations. In the first place, he arrived in the woods a little earlier in the year than deer babies usually do. This was important, for it lengthened his first summer, and gave more opportunity for growth before the return of cold weather. If the winter had lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms, his early advent might have been anything but a blessing; but the spring proved a mild one, and there was plenty of good growing weather for fawns. Then, too, his mother as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he was her only child. If there had been twins, as there were the year before, he would, of course, have had to share her milk with a brother or sister; but as it was he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural monopoly, and he grew and prospered accordingly, and was a baby to be proud of.
And his mother took good care of him, and never tried to show him off before the other people of the woods. She knew that it was far safer and wiser to keep him concealed as long as possible, and not let anyone know that she had him. So instead of letting him wander with her through the woods when she went in search of food, she generally left him hidden in a thicket or behind a bush or a fallen tree. There he spent many a long, lonely hour, idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows, and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby thoughts, or looking at nothing and thinking of nothing, but just sleeping the quiet sleep of infancy, and living, and growing, and getting ready for hard times.
At first the Fawn knew no difference between friends and enemies, but the instinct of the hunted soon awoke and told him when to be afraid. If a hostile animal came by while the doe was gone, he would crouch low, with his nose to the ground and his big ears laid back on his neck; or if pressed too closely he would jump up and hurry away to some better cover, with leaps and bounds so light and airy that they seemed the very music of motion. But that did not happen very often. His hiding-places were well chosen, and he usually lay still till his mother came back.
When she thought he was large enough, and strong and swift enough, she let him travel with her; and then he became acquainted with several new kinds of forest—with the dark hemlock groves, and the dense cedar swamps; with the open tamarack, where the trees stand wide apart, and between them the great purple-and-white lady's-slippers bloom; with the cranberry marshes, where pitcher-plants live, and white-plumed grasses nod in the breeze; with sandy ridges where the pine-trees purr with pleasure when the wind strokes them; with the broad, beautiful Glimmerglass, laughing and shimmering in the sunshine, and with all the sights and the sounds of that wonderful world where he was to spend the years of his deerhood.
They were a very silent pair. When his breakfast was ready she would sometimes call him with a low murmuring, and he would answer her with a little bleat; but those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around their feet. Yet they understood each other perfectly, and they were very happy together. There was little need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong day was to wander about while the doe picked up her food, and then, when she had eaten her fill, to lie down in some sheltered place, and there rest and chew the cud till it was time to move again.
Life wasn't all sunshine, of course. There were plenty of hard things for the baby Buck to put up with, and perhaps the worst were the mosquitoes and the black-flies and "no-see-'ems" that swarmed in the woods and swamps through the month of June. They got into his mouth and into his nose; they gathered in circles around his eyes; and they snuggled cosily down between the short hairs of his pretty, spotted coat, and sucked the blood out of him till it seemed as if he would soon go dry. For a while they were almost unbearable, but I suppose the woods-people get somewhat hardened to them. Otherwise I should think our friends would have been driven mad, for there was never any respite from their attacks, except possibly a very stormy day, or a bath in the lake, or a saunter on the shore.
At the eastern end of the Glimmerglass there is a broad strip of sand beach, where, if there happens to be a breeze from the water, one can walk and be quite free from the flies; though in calm weather, or with an offshore wind, it is not much better than the woods. There, during fly-time, the doe and her baby were often to be found; and to see him promenading up and down the hard sand, with his mother looking on, was one of the prettiest sights in all the wilderness. The ground-color of his coat was a bright bay red, somewhat like that of his mother's summer clothing; but deeper and richer and handsomer, and with pure white spots arranged in irregular rows all along his neck and back and sides. He was so sleek and polished that he fairly glistened in the sunshine, like a well-groomed horse; his great dark eyes were brighter than a girl's at her first ball; and his ears were almost as big as a mule's, and a million times as pretty. But best and most beautiful of all was the marvellous life and grace and spirit of his every pose and motion. When he walked, his head and neck were thrust forward and drawn back again at every step with the daintiest gesture imaginable; and his tiny pointed hoofs touched the ground so lightly, and were away again so quickly, that you hardly knew what they had done. If anything startled him, he stamped with his forefoot on the hard sand, and tossed his head in the air with an expression that was not fear, but alertness, and even defiance. And when he leaped and ran—but there's no use in trying to describe that.
By the middle of July most of the flies were gone, and the deer could travel where they pleased without being eaten alive. And then, almost before they knew what had happened, the summer was gone, too, and the autumn had come. The Fawn's white spots disappeared, and both he and his mother put off their thin red summer clothing and donned the blue coat of fall, which would by and by fade into the gray of winter—a garment made of longer, coarser hairs, which were so thick that they had to stand on end because there wasn't room for them to lie down, and which made such a warm covering that one who wore it could sleep all night in the snow, and rise in the morning dry and comfortable.
The Fawn had thriven wonderfully. Already the budding antlers were pushing through the skin on the top of his head, which alone is pretty good proof that he was a remarkable baby. But, of course, the infancy of a wild animal is always much shorter than that of a human child. It is well that this is so, for if the period of weakness and helplessness was not shortened for them, there would probably be very few who would ever survive its dangers and reach maturity. The Fawn was weaned early in the autumn; though he still ran with his mother, and she showed him what herbs and leaves were pleasantest to the taste and best for building up bone and muscle, and where the beechnuts were most plentiful. The mast was good that fall, which isn't always the case, and that was another lucky star in young Buck's horoscope. So much depends on having plenty to eat the first year.
And now the doe was thriving as well as her son. Through the summer she had been thin and poor, for the Fawn had fed on her life and strength, and the best of all that came to her she had given to him; but the strain was over at last, and there were granted her a few weeks in which to prepare for the season of cold and storm and scanty food. She made the best of them, and in an amazingly short time she was rolling fat.
Everything was lovely and the goose hung high, when all of a sudden the peace and quiet of their every-day lives were rudely broken. The hunting season had come, and half-a-dozen farmers from lower Michigan had camped beside the Glimmerglass. They were not really very formidable. If one wants to kill deer, one should learn to shoot straight and to get around in the woods without making quite as much noise as a locomotive. But their racket was intolerable, and after a day or two the doe and the Fawn left home and spent the next three or four weeks near a secluded little pond several miles away to the southeast.
By the first of December these troublous times were over, and they had returned to their old haunts in the beech and maple woods, where they picked up a rather scanty living by scraping the light snow away with their forefeet in search of the savory nuts. But before Christmas there came a storm which covered the ground so deeply that they could no longer dig out enough food to keep them from going hungry; and they were forced to leave the high lands and make their way to the evergreen swamps around the head-waters of the Tahquamenon. There they lived on twigs of balsam and hemlock and spruce, with now and then a mouthful of moss or a nutritious lichen. Little by little the fat on their ribs disappeared, they grew lank and lean again, and the bones showed more and more plainly through their heavy winter coats. If one of those November hunters had succeeded in setting his teeth in their flesh he would have found that it had a very pleasant, nutty flavor, but in February it would have tasted decidedly of hemlock. Yet they were strong and healthy, in spite of their boniness, and of course you can't expect to be very fat in winter.
There were worse things than hunger. One afternoon they were following a big buck down a runway—all three of them minding their own business and behaving in a very orderly and peaceable manner—when a shanty-boy stepped out from behind a big birch just ahead of them, and said, "Aah!" very derisively and insultingly. The wind was blowing from them to him, and they hadn't had the least idea that he was there until they were within three rods of his tree. The buck was so startled that for an instant he simply stood still and stared, which was exactly what the shanty-boy had expected him to do. He had stopped so suddenly that his forefeet were thrust forward into the snow, and he was leaning backward a trifle. His head was up, his eyes were almost popping out of their sockets, and there was such a look of astonishment on his face that the man laughed as he raised his gun and took aim. In a second the deer had wheeled and was in the air, but a bullet broke his back just as he left the ground, and he came tumbling down again in a shapeless heap. His spinal cord was cut, and half his body was dead; but he would not give up even then, and he half rose on his forefeet and tried to drag himself away. The shanty-boy stepped to his side with a knife in his hand, the deer gave one loud bleat of fear and pain, and then it was all over.
But by that time the doe and the Fawn were far down the runway—out of sight, and out of danger. Next day they passed that way again, and saw a Canada lynx standing where the buck had fallen, licking his chops as if he had just finished a good meal. It is hard work carrying a deer through the woods, and the shanty-boy had lightened his load as much as possible. Lynxes are not nice. The mother and son pulled their freight as fast as they could travel.
When the world turned green again they went back to the Glimmerglass, but they had not been there long before the young Buck had his nose put out of joint by the arrival of two new babies. Thenceforth his mother had all she could do to take care of them, without paying any further attention to him. The days of his fawnhood were over, and it was time for him to strike out into the world and make his own living.
However, I don't think he was very lonesome. There were plenty of other deer in the woods, and though he did not associate with any of them as he had with his mother, yet he may have enjoyed meeting them occasionally in his travels. And there was ever so much to do and to think about. Eating took up a good deal of time, for he was very active and was still growing, and his strong young body was constantly calling for more food. And it wasn't enough merely to find the food and swallow it, for no sooner was his stomach full than he had to lie down and chew the cud for an hour or so. And, of course, the black-flies and mosquitoes and "no-see-'ems" helped to make things interesting, just as they had the year before. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to be lonely in the woods during fly-time. He changed his clothes, too, and put on a much handsomer dress, though I doubt if he took as much interest in that operation as most of us would. The change contributed greatly to his comfort, for his light summer garment was much better adapted to warm weather than his winter coat, but it did not require any conscious effort on his part. On hot days he sometimes waded out into the lake in search of lily-pads, and the touch of the cool water was very grateful. Occasionally he would take a long swim, and once or twice he paddled clear across the Glimmerglass, from one shore to the other.
And it was during this summer that he raised his first real antlers. Those of the previous autumn had been nothing but two little buds of bone, but these were pointed spikes, several inches in length, standing straight up from the top of his head without a fork or a branch or a curve. They did not add very much to his good looks, and, of course, they dropped off early in the following winter, but they were the forerunners of the beautiful branching antlers of his later years, and if he thought about them at all they were probably as welcome as a boy's first mustache.
Late in the following autumn an event occurred which left its mark on him for the rest of his life. One night he wandered into a part of the woods where some lumbermen had been working during the day. On the ground where they had eaten their lunch he found some baked beans and a piece of dried apple-pie, and he ate them greedily and was glad that he had come. But he found something else, too. One of the road-monkeys had carelessly left his axe in the snow with the edge turned up. The Buck stepped on it, and it slipped in between the two halves of his cloven hoof, and cut deep into his foot. The wound healed in the course of time, but from that night the toes—they were those of his left hind foot—were spread far apart, instead of lying close together as they should have done. Sticks and roots sometimes caught between them in a way that was very annoying, and his track was different from that of any other deer in the woods, which was not a thing to be desired. He was not crippled, however, for he could still leap almost, if not quite, as far as ever, and run almost as fast.
He continued to grow and prosper, and the next summer he raised a pair of forked antlers with two tines each.
And now he is well started down the runway of life, and we must leave him to travel by himself for two or three years. He ranged the woods far and near, and came to know them as a man knows his own house; but no matter what places he visited, the old haunts that his mother had shown him were the best of all, as the deer have learned by the experience of generation after generation. He always came back again to the Glimmerglass, and as the seasons went by I often saw his broad, spreading hoof-print on the sandy beach where they two had so often walked in that first summer. He evidently had plenty of company, and was probably enjoying life, for all around were other foot-prints that were narrow and delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them, of course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but others were those of his friends and acquaintances, and it is quite possible that some of the tiniest and daintiest were made by his children.
That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a summer night, and besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes find there the trails of the waddling porcupines, the broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he goes shambling by, and the handwriting of many another of the woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often be enacted on the smooth, hard sand that lies between the woods and the water, and it is a pity that the show always comes to a sudden close if any would-be spectators appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints of the performers.
With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the other deer that made their homes around the Glimmerglass were driven away for a time. A few stayed, or at least remained as near as they dared; but compared with summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And in his fourth year, in spite of all his efforts to keep out of harm's way, the Buck came very near losing his life at the hands of a man who had really learned how to hunt—not one of the farmers who went ramming about the woods, shooting at everything in sight, and making noise enough to startle even the porcupines.
One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his court-room in Detroit and started for his house. He bought an evening paper as he boarded the street-car; and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that met his eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan: "Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds." The judge folded the paper again and put it in his pocket, and all the rest of the way home he was dreaming of things that he had seen before—of the white and silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the long still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November skies, of a huge buck feeding unconcernedly beneath the beech-trees, of nutty venison steaks broiling on the coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers for his dining-room. Court had adjourned for three days, and that night he took the train for the north. And while he travelled, the snow came down softly and silently, melting at first as fast as it fell, and then, as the cold grew sharper, clothing the woods in a thin, white robe, the first gift of the coming winter.
Next day the Buck was lying behind a fallen tree, chewing his cud, when the breeze brought him a whiff of an unpleasant human odor. He jumped up and hurried away, and the judge heard him crash through the bushes, and searched until he had found his trail. An hour later, as the Buck was nosing for beechnuts in the snow, a rifle cracked and a bullet went zipping by and carried off the very tip of his left antler. He dropped his white flag and was off like a shot.
Chase a wounded deer, and he will run for miles; leave him alone, and if he is badly hurt he will soon lie down. The chances are that he will never get up again. The judge knew that the Buck was hit, for he had seen his tail come down. But was he hit hard? There was no blood on the trail, and the judge decided to follow.
The Buck hurried on, but before long his leaps began to grow shorter. After a mile or so he stopped, looked back, and listened. The woods were very, very still, and for all that he could see or hear there was not the least sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, and in a few minutes he pushed on again, though not as rapidly as before. As the short afternoon wore away he travelled still more slowly, and his stops were longer and more frequent. And at last, just before sunset, as he stood and watched for the enemy who might or might not be on his trail, he heard a twig snap, and saw a dark form slip behind a tree. This time he ran as he had never run before in all his life.
The judge spent the night at the nearest lumber-camp, and the next morning he was out again as soon as he could see, following his own trail back to where he had left that of the Buck. On the way he crossed the tracks of two other deer, but they had no temptations for him. He wanted to solve the mystery of that spreading hoof-print, and to make sure that his shot had not been a clean miss. And now began a day which was without precedent in the Buck's whole history. Those woods are not the best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek with a man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded slopes from which he can look back to see if anyone is following him. Even the glades and the open cranberry swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere there is cover for the still-hunter. And when the ground is carpeted with snow an inch and a half deep, as it was then, and at every step a deer must leave behind him a trail as plain as a turnpike road, then it is not strange if he feels that he has run up against a decidedly tough proposition. Eyes, ears, and nose are all on the alert, and all doing their level best, but what eye can penetrate the cedar swamp beyond a few yards; or what ear can always catch the tread of a moccasin on the moss and the snow before it comes within rifle range; or what nose, no matter how delicate, can detect anything but what happens to lie in its owner's path, or what the wind chooses to bring it? Many a foe had crossed the Buck's trail in the course of his life; but none had ever followed him like this—silently and relentlessly—slowly, but without a moment's pause. A few leaps were always enough to put the judge out of sight, and half an hour's run left him far behind; but in a little while he was there again, creeping cautiously through the undergrowth, and peering this way and that for a glimpse of a plump, round, blue-gray body. Once he fired before the deer knew that he was at hand, and if a hanging twig had not turned the bullet a trifle from its course, the still-hunt would have ended then and there.
But late in the afternoon the Buck thought that he had really shaken his pursuer off, and the judge was beginning to think so, too. They had not seen each other for two or three hours, the day was nearly over, and there were signs of a change in the weather. If the Buck could hold out till nightfall, and then the snow should melt before morning, he would be comparatively safe.
In his fear of the enemy lurking in the rear, he had forgotten all other dangers; and without quite realizing what he was doing he had come back to the Glimmerglass, and was tramping once more up and down the old familiar runways. Presently he came upon a huge maple, lying prostrate on the ground. He walked around its great bushy head and down toward its foot; and there he found a broad, saucer-shaped hollow, left when the tree was torn up by the roots in some wild gale. On one side rose a mass of earth, straight as a stone wall and four or five feet in height; and against its foot lay one of the most tempting beds of dead leaves that he had ever seen, free from snow, dry as a whistle, soft and downy. The sight of it was too much for him. He was very weary, his limbs fairly ached with fatigue, and for the last hour his spread hoof had given him a good deal of pain. His enemy was nowhere in sight, and in spite of his misgivings he sank down on the couch with a sigh of comfort, and began to chew his cud.
The judge was about ready to give up for the night when he, too, came upon that fallen maple. He saw the wall of earth and twisted roots, with the deer-tracks leading toward it; and slowly, softly, silently, he crept down toward the Buck's shelter.
There was no wind that evening, and the woods seemed perfectly still; but now, unnoticed by the judge, a faint, faint puff came wandering among the trees, as if on purpose to warn the deer of his danger. Suddenly he started, sniffed the air, and was up and away like a race-horse—not leaping nor bounding now, but running low, with his head down, and his antlers laid back on his neck. If he had been in the cedar swamp he would have escaped unhurt, but up in the hardwood the trees do not stand so close, and one can see a little farther. The judge fired before he could get out of sight, and he dropped with three ribs broken and a bullet lodged behind his right shoulder. He was up again in an instant, but there were blood-stains on the snow where he had lain, and this time the judge did not follow. Instead of giving chase he went straight back to the lumber-camp, feeling almost as sure of that new pair of antlers as if he had carried them with him.
The Buck ran a little way, with his flag lowered and the blood spurting, and then he lay down to rest, just as the judge knew he would. The bleeding soon stopped, but it left him very weak and tired, and that night was the most miserable he had ever known. The darkness settled down thick and black over the woods, the wind began to blow, and by and by the rain commenced to fall—first a drizzle, and then a steady pour. Cold and wet, wounded and tired and hungry, the Buck was about as wretched as it is possible for a mortal to be. And yet that rain was the one and only thing that could save him. Under its melting touch the snow began to disappear, and before morning the ground was bare again. Even the blood-stains were washed away. It would take a better nose than the judge's to track him now.
Yet the danger was not over, by any means. The judge knew very nearly where to look for him, and could probably find him if he did not get up and move on. And to move on, or even to rise to his feet, seemed utterly impossible. The least motion sent the most exquisite pain shooting through his whole body, and I believe he would have died where he lay, either at the hands of the judge or from exhaustion, if another man hadn't come along. The judge would have advanced slowly and quietly, and the deer might never have known he was coming till a rifle bullet hit him; but this man's errand must have been a different one, for he came striding noisily through the trees and bushes and over the dead leaves, whistling "I Want Yer, Ma Honey," at the top of his whistle. If you are obliged to be out in the woods during the hunting season, and don't care to kill anything, it is always best to make as much noise as you can. There is less danger that some other fool will take you for a deer and shoot you dead. The Buck heard him, of course, and tried to rise, only to sink back with a groan. He couldn't do it, or at least he thought he couldn't. But when the man came around a little balsam only two rods away, then his panic got the better of his pain, and he jumped up and made off at a clumsy, limping run. Every joint seemed on fire, and he ached from the top of his head to the toes of that poor left hind-foot. But after the first plunge it was not quite so bad. The motion took some of the stiffness out of his limbs, and by the time the judge arrived he was a mile away and was thinking about breakfast.
We must do the sportsman the justice of saying that his remorse was very keen when he stepped aboard the train that night, bound for Detroit. He had wounded a deer and had let it get away from him, to suffer, and probably to die a painful, lingering death. The whole day—the last of the hunting season and of his court recess—had been spent in an unavailing search; not merely because he wanted some venison and a pair of antlers to carry home with him, but because he wanted to put the Buck out of his misery. He had failed everywhere, and he felt sorry and ashamed, and wished he had stayed at home. But, as it happened, the Buck did not want to be put out of his misery. Just as the judge took the train he was lying down for the night. He would be stiff when he rose again, but not as stiff as he had been that morning. He would be weak and tired, but he would still be able to travel and find food. He would lose his plumpness and roundness, no doubt, and lose them very rapidly. The winter would probably be a hard one, with such a misfortune as this at its very beginning. But no matter, it would pass. He wasn't the first Buck who had had his ribs smashed by an injection of lead and had lived to tell the tale.
The next year it was his antlers that got him into trouble—his antlers and his quarrelsomeness. Two round, black, velvet-covered knobs had appeared in spring on the top of his head, and had pushed up higher and higher till they formed cylindrical columns, each one leaning outward and a little backward. They were hot as fever with the blood that was rushing through them, building up the living masonry; and at the upper ends, where the work was newest, they were soft and spongy, and very sensitive, so that the least touch was enough to give pain. Longer and longer they grew, and harder and harder; by and by curving forward and inward; and one after another the tines appeared. And at last, in the early autumn, the tall towers of bone were complete, the blood ceased to course through them, and the Buck rubbed them against the tree-trunks until the velvety skin was all worn off, and they were left smooth and brown and polished. They were a handsome pair, spreading and branching very gracefully over his forehead, and bearing four tines to each beam. It is a mistake to suppose, as so many people do, that the number of tines on each antler invariably corresponds to the number of years that its owner has lived; but it very often does, especially before he has passed the prime of life.
No sooner were the antlers finished than the Buck began to grow fat. He had been eating heartily for months, but he hadn't been able to put much flesh on his ribs as long as he had that big, bony growth to feed. Bucks and does are alike in this, that for both of them the summer is a season of plenty, but not of growing plump and round and strong. The difference between them is that the does give their strength and vitality to the children they are nursing, while the bucks pile theirs up on their own foreheads.