Gray Eagle (Sass collection)/Peregrine
FIVE hundred feet above the rocky summit of Devilhead Peak a black speck sailed slowly across the bright blue face of the sky. Dan Alexander, striding along a winding trail close to the foot of the mountain, saw that soaring speck and smiled grimly.
"You're out early, Cloud King," he muttered, "an' right now you're lookin' things over before you decide where you'll hunt. Better keep out o' my way, you bloody murderer, or your hunting'll come to a sudden end. Hello! What's up now?"
The young mountaineer, his rifle resting in the crook of his left elbow, halted and gazed upward. The black speck which was Cloud King no longer circled above the peak. Instead, it was shooting down with that appalling swiftness which distinguishes the peregrine falcon among all the sharptaloned hunters of the air. Wide-eyed and almost breathless, Dan watched that splendid plunge. Then with an exclamation he leaped upon a rock beside the trail whence he could look out over a small grass-grown wheat field in the bottom of the valley.
Straight toward the wheat field Cloud King, the peregrine, was falling. His long wings were half closed, so that his body had the shape of a spearhead—a spearhead rushing through space at such terrific speed that the keen eyes of the mountaineer could scarcely distinguish its form. Instantly Dan knew that in or above the wheat field Cloud King had spotted a victim, and in a moment he saw it—a ruffed grouse flying across the open only a few yards above the ground. The big bird had left an oak knoll some distance ahead of the woodsman and had taken a short cut across the field in order to reach the chestnut slope on the other side.
"You fool!" Dan whispered, talking to himself, as was his habit when there was no one else to talk to. "Don't you know"
He got no further, for at that moment a living thunderbolt coming from above and behind struck the grouse squarely upon the back and hurled it lifeless into the grass.
Dan, balancing his tall lean body on the rock beside the trail, watched the falcon shoot onward past the spot where his victim had fallen, swerve on stiffened wings and return with leisurely strokes to recover his prey. Low above the grass, he hovered for a moment on slowly beating pinions; and Dan was on the point of jumping down from the rock for a quick dash into the wheat field, when something happened which brought an exclamation of astonishment from his lips.
From a thick tuft of weeds almost directly under the hovering hawk a slim reddish shape leaped into the air. Long pointed jaws snapped together within an inch of the falcon's body, and with a scream of anger Cloud King, the peregrine, shot forward and upward. Dan, craning his neck, could see plainly a big red fox trotting slowly through the sparse grass of the wheat field, the dead grouse hanging from his jaws.
For a moment amazement held the young woodsman motionless. Then a broad grin spread slowly across his thin, sun-tanned face. He watched the fox, which was well out of range, pass on across the field to the cover of the woods, while the falcon swooped and hovered overhead. Then he jumped lightly down from the rock and strode on along the trail.
So it happened that Dan Alexander, setting out one October morning on a hunt which had nothing to do with Cloud King, the peregrine of Devilhead, or with Red Rogue, the old dog fox that was Cloud King's neighbor, encountered these two old enemies of his at the very outset of his quest. Dan knew Cloud King and Red Rogue well—the Bachelors of Devilhead, he sometimes called them, because they lived mateless and alone. It was he who had named them; for there was a romantic strain in the young mountaineer, developed by a year at college in the lowlands, which caused him to give titles of his own to those wild creatures of the mountain woods which were constantly crossing his path.
It was no feeling akin to affection, however, which had led him to study with special care the habits of the peregrine falcon and the old red fox which had their homes on the craggy summit of Devilhead Peak, looming high above his cabin. Long ago Dan had learned to look upon these two as his foes and rivals, destroyers of the game which he loved to hunt and which he regarded as his most precious possession. Again and again he had seen the evidences of their depredations, and for months he had waged an intermittent war against them. So far, however, they had thwarted all his stratagems and defied his woodcraft; and now, as he passed on along the trail, humming a tune under his breath, resentment gradually supplanted the amusement which the episode in the wheat field had inspired.
He had found delight in witnessing the discomfiture of Cloud King. That bold pirate of the airy spaces had been fooled for once; the game which he had killed had been taken away from him under his very nose. But while one of the brigands of Devilhead had thus been cheated, the other had profited. Red Rogue, the rascally fox that lived by his wits, even as Cloud King lived by his matchless speed and indomitable courage, was at that very moment feasting upon a fat grouse—or pheasant, as Dan called it—which good luck and his own quick brain had procured for him. Dan grumbled impatiently at the thought and frowned darkly as he reviewed the little tragedy in the wheat field—a tragedy which was a sharp reminder that the two buccaneers of Devilhead were still waging destructive war on the game that he cherished as his own.
"I'll get them two vagabones," he muttered, "if it takes all winter. That's all they is to it. The confounded murderous varmints! Slaughterin' a pheasant right before my eyes!"
For a moment he was tempted to renew then and there his crusade against the marauders of Devilhead, climbing the peak and lying in ambush near the summit in the hope of getting a shot at the fox or the falcon when they returned to their homes in the great cliff just under the brow of the mountain. He had tried that method before, however, and found it fruitless, and he quickly abandoned the idea. Presently he dismissed the problem from his mind for the moment and focused his thoughts once more upon the object which had led him to take the trail that morning. On a wooded shoulder sloping down from Devilhead Peak a big wild gobbler had taken up his abode. It was in search of this gobbler that Dan had started out with his rifle shortly after sunrise, and another half-hour would bring him to the spot where he hoped to find the turkey seeking his forenoon meal.
Some three hours later, on a saddle of a high ridge across the valley from Devilhead, a black-and-white pileated woodpecker, or logcock, hammering on a dead chestnut limb, suddenly ceased his labors. A movement far beneath him near the foot of his tree had caught his eye. Part of a large rock five or six yards from the base of the chestnut had come to life, had stirred slightly, had whisked itself away from the main mass of the rock and now lay motionless again in the rock's shadow.
The logcock observed that this thing which had moved had the exact shape of a fox's body—that it was, in fact, a fox. His curiosity aroused, the big woodpecker, almost as large as a small duck, hung motionless on his chestnut limb, watching eagerly, his long striped neck twisted sideways, his tall scarlet crest erect. He had failed to distinguish Red Rogue, the fox, taking a sun bath on the rock. Even if he had been aware that a fox was enjoying a nap fifty feet beneath him, he would not have been especially interested. But now that Red Rogue had moved, and moved so swiftly and energetically, the logcock felt that this fox was worth watching.
Presently he was aware of certain faint sounds frequently repeated and he knew at once that these sounds were the cause of the fox's sudden movement. Something was stirring in the dense kalmias clothing the steep side of the ridge just below the rock. What it was the logcock did not know; but he did know that the fox was listening to those sounds and that he found them interesting. The sounds were stealthy yet distinct, and they were drawing nearer. The intruder, whatever it was, was making its way up the side of the ridge straight for the rock behind which Red Rogue was crouching.
The logcock waited and watched, his whole attention centered upon the fox lying there in his ambush and upon those mysterious, slowly approaching sounds. Yet now and again as he waited his bright beady eyes darted swift glances out over the valley which he overlooked from his chestnut tree; and suddenly he saw something which drove all other matters from his mind.
Straight across the valley, coming from the direction of Devilhead Peak, a long-winged gray hawk was flying swiftly, heading directly toward the logcock's chestnut. The big woodpecker recognized the hawk at once as the peregrine falcon that had his aerie on Devilhead crag. For an instant the logcock glanced wildly about him. Then, as nimbly as a squirrel, he darted around the limb. His body plastered against the wood, he watched with terrified eyes as the falcon shot past and swerved sharply upward to a perch on a dead oak some fifty paces to the right.
If Cloud King, the peregrine, perching on the topmost stick of the oak, saw Red Rogue, his neighbor of Devilhead crag, crouching beside the rock beneath him, the falcon gave no sign. He did not see the logcock in the chestnut near by, for the big woodpecker was careful to keep himself hidden behind the stout limb to which he was clinging. Cloud King must have heard the faint sounds coming at intervals from the shrubbery on the slope of the ridge below the rock, but apparently he paid no attention to them, and seemed to doze on his perch. As a matter of fact, he had come to the dead oak foranap. He had been hunting on the wing nearly all morning, and the oak, thrusting its naked top above the other trees on the ridge, had attracted him as a suitable place for a brief siesta.
Yet sleepy as he seemed and really was, his restless eyes were not content to give themselves as yet to complete inactivity. Now and again at frequent intervals they awoke and shot keen glances here and there; and suddenly, after some ten minutes had passed, they chanced to detect a tiny spot of scarlet on a high limb of a dead chestnut near at hand. For some minutes then, though the hawk himself did not move, those eyes remained wide awake, fiercely and intently alert; and presently they saw this scarlet spot stir slightly, grow larger and then resolve itself into the red crest and black-mustached face of a logcock peering cautiously around the chestnut limb.
What happened then happened in less time than is required to tell it; and it was an odd whim of the woods fates to bring to a crisis at precisely the same moment the little drama of the tree-tops and that other drama which, all the while, had been developing on the ground below.
Suddenly the place where Cloud King had been perching was empty. With the speed of a bullet the peregrine was shooting through the air toward the chestnut limb behind which the logcock was hiding. In that same instant Red Rogue, the fox, saw at last the victim for which he had been waiting, the mysterious maker of those stealthy sounds which for so many minutes had been drawing nearer in the kalmias.
To Red Rogue there had never been the slightest mystery about those sounds. He had known from the beginning exactly what they were; and he was not in the least surprised when a tall wild gobbler stepped out from the shrubbery just beyond the rock.
Red Rogue crouched close to the ground, his slim body tense, his eyes gleaming. The big bronze bird had but to take one more step forward and he would come within reach of the hidden fox's leap.
That step was never taken. A shrill scream almost directly above the turkey, a wild piercing cry of utter terror, shattered the noonday silence of the woods. The gobbler wheeled in his tracks, crouched for a fraction of a second, then launched himself upward and outward from the steep mountainside. Behind him a long tawny shape bounded over the rock and hurled itself through the air; but the distance was too great and the jaws of the fox snapped together a yard or more behind the tip of the gobbler's tail.
The gobbler never saw Red Rogue, never knew how close he had been to death. Nor did he understand at first the meaning of the mad scream of panic which had startled him into sudden flight in the very nick of time. Yet, as he swept out over the valley on wide, swiftly beating wings, that scream seemed for an instant to pursue him, and he recognized it then as the cry of a frightened logcock. Once more it rang out, this time close above him in the air, and almost at the same moment a feathered projectile shot past him, plunging straight down toward the green roof of the kalmia thicket clothing the slope of the ridge. In an instant it had vanished in the kalmias; but immediately the flying turkey was aware of a swish of wings above him, and glacing upward as he flew, he saw a graybacked, long-winged hawk poised in the air, his fierce eyes peering downward.
The gobbler stood in no fear of hawks. Among the winged hunters of the mountains only the great golden eagles were sufficiently large and powerful to threaten his safety. This hawk that had appeared so suddenly in the air above him was not of the eagle kind. It was much smaller than those arrogant monarchs of the sky spaces—in spite of its wide spread of wing, a mere pygmy compared with the gobbler himself; and, savage though its aspect was, he felt no dread of it.
He swept serenely onward over the deep gorgelike valley, high above the tree-tops on the slope below. In spite of his bulk and weight, his powerful wings bore him easily and swiftly, and, his momentary fright forgotten, he exulted in their strength. It was good to ride the air. As a rule, his flights were short; but now, instead of swinging in toward the ridge he had just left and seeking a roost in some tree-top there, he headed straight outward across the valley. A mile or so away rose the forested slope of Devilhead ridge, his favorite feeding ground. He turned his bill toward a shoulder of that ridge where he had fed the previous day and where he knew that he would find abundant provender.
For a few moments the gobbler, as he swept on across the valley, forgot the long-winged falcon which he had glimpsed above him. The gobbler's flight was a long and very gradual descent. The hawk, on the other hand, had mounted somewhat higher and had dropped a little behind, so that the turkey no longer saw him. Nevertheless, it was evident that he was following the turkey, for when the latter changed his course slightly, the falcon turned also and maintained his position a hundred feet above the larger bird and an equal distance behind him. Yet even if the gobbler had realized that he was being pursued, he would have felt no alarm. He could not know that a series of events that morning had fanned into utterly reckless fury the savage and fearless spirit of Cloud King, the peregrine falcon of Devilhead Peak.
All that day ill luck had dogged Cloud King. Beginning with the incident in the wheat field, where Red Rogue, the fox, had robbed him of the grouse which he had struck down, he had suffered one disappointment after another in his hunting. Three times during the forenoon he had stooped at prey only to miss it by an inch through no fault of his own. Finally, by an even narrower margin, he had missed the logcock whose scarlet-crested face he had seen peering around the chestnut limb. This was the most exasperating mishap of all, not only because of the other failures which had preceded it, but also because the falcon had felt very sure of his game. Though they were fairly fast flyers, logcocks were not adepts in aërial strategy; and this one, detected in an exposed place, should have fallen an easy victim to the superbly swift and marvelously agile peregrine.
Perhaps this logcock was wilier than most. Perhape it was mainly luck, combined with overconfidence on the falcon's part, which caused Cloud King to miss once more. At any rate, the big woodpecker, after uttering that first shriek of terror which had startled the gobbler into flight, had done the one thing that could save him.
Instead of fleeing at top speed, in which case he would have been overtaken in a few seconds, he had dived almost straight downward and, narrowly missing the flying gobbler in his descent, had plunged headforemost into the dense cover of the kalmia thicket clothing the slope of the ridge. Cloud King, whizzing through the air like a rifle bullet, had clutched at him with curved needle-pointed talons just as he began his plunge; but the logcock's unexpected dive had saved him, and the falcon, nonplused for an instant, had seen his hoped-for victim drop like a plummet into the impenetrable kalmias some fifty feet below.
It was then that Cloud King, poising in the air above the spot where the logcock had vanished, saw the great gobbler shooting past beneath him; and it was then that his pent-up fury, intensified no doubt by hunger and by the excitement of his lightninglike assault on the logcock, impelled him to attempt the most spectacular exploit of his strenuous career.
Ordinarily the peregrine would never have attacked so large a bird as a twenty-pound wild gobbler. It was not that he lacked courage for such an enterprise, but simply that the instinct of his race, fixed through countless generations, would not have suggested the wild turkey as prey. The peregrine, or duck hawk, among the swiftest and most courageous of all the hawk kind, lives chiefly on wild ducks and other water fowl, where these are to be found; but in the high mountain country, where such game was rare, Cloud King, the peregrine of Devilhead Peak, levied tribute on such upland wild folk as grouse, quail, rabbits, doves and various forest birds. It had never occurred to him to seek a victim among the wild turkeys which still frequented certain parts of the mountain woods. In fact, because turkeys were rather rare and in general kept pretty carefully under cover, he had seen very little of them during his life in the mountains and knew next to nothing about their ways.
Now, however, his fierce and venturesome spirit, roused by the irritating mishaps of that morning and in particular by the failure of his attempt upon the logcock, Cloud King determined to match his speed and daring against the weight of an antagonist larger than any other that he had ever attacked.
This great bronze-winged gobbler, appearing suddenly beneath him at the very moment when the logcock vanished in the kalmias, was a tempting target. For an instant the peregrine, hanging motionless in the air on swiftly beating pinions, was on the point of launching his assault then and there.
But even in his fury he was wise with the inherited wisdom of his race. He hung at that instant not more than a score of feet above the gobbler, and he realized instinctively that this was an insufficient height—that in attacking so huge an opponent he must plunge upon it from a much greater altitude. Hence for the moment he restrained his ardor. Instead of darting down at once upon his intended victim, he began to mount higher above it and at the same time slackened his pace slightly to let the turkey draw somewhat ahead.
There was plenty of time. The gobbler was flying straight out across the valley, evidently aiming for the ridge on the other side. Cloud King mounted higher and higher, his fierce eyes fixed upon his prey. The bulky body of the turkey was driving forward at high speed; but Cloud King kept pace with him easily, his long tapering wings fanning the air with deliberate, measured strokes. Seemingly his fury had passed. Cool, skillful, unhurried, a perfect master of aërial warfare, he would launch his assault when the right time came and not an instant before.
On the wooded slope of Devilhead ridge, across the valley, Dan Alexander sat at the foot of a big chestnut oak and gazed out across the gorge. He was tired and disappointed. For hours he had tramped the woods on the western shoulder of the ridge, searching for the great wild gobbler which for several mornings had been feeding there. He had found many old "scratches"—places where the big bird had been feeding on previous days—but he had discovered no fresh sign. Dan gave up the quest at last, and before beginning the long homeward tramp, sat down to rest in a shady spot on the steep mountain side whence he could look out across the valley.
He had been sitting there for perhaps five minutes, his mind busy with plans for the new campaign which he intended to wage against Cloud King and Red Rogue, the marauders of Devilhead Peak, when his gray eyes brightened suddenly. For a moment he gazed intently at some distant object straight ahead of him. Then with a low exclamation he jumped to his feet, his eyes still fixed upon the strange thing which had attracted his attention.
It was an amazing sight indeed. Far out over the valley, almost on a level with the spot where he stood, the young woodsman saw a great wide-winged bird flying straight toward him—a bird which he recognized at once. It was the wild gobbler which he had been hunting all morning, the gobbler whose scratches he had found on Devilhead ridge. But it was not solely the sight of his quarry which kindled a glow of excitement in Dan's eyes.
The gobbler was not alone. Above him, as he came on, flew another and much smaller bird—a bird whose long pointed wings, fanning the air rather slowly and yet with masterful certainty and power, marked him at once as the peregrine of Devilhead crag. The falcon was flying about a hundred feet above the turkey, and immediately Dan realized with the intuitive insight of the born woodsman that Cloud King's presence there was not accidental. Moments before the climax came the young mountaineer sensed what was to happen.
Suddenly he saw Cloud King close his wings and plunge. It seemed to Dan that the falcon did not merely fall upon his prey, but that he drove himself downward with wings and tail at well-nigh incredible speed. More sensitive and more imaginative than most mountain woodsmen, a keen and sympathetic student of the wild things which he loved in his own fashion even while he hunted them, Dan felt his pulse quicken at the spectacle of that superbly reckless attack.
For the moment he forgot his hatred of Cloud King in admiration of the falcon's swiftness and daring; and as the winged thunderbolt struck the gobbler squarely on the back where neck and body joined, a thrill of fierce joy shot through the young mountaineer—the tribute of one good hunter to another who has proved himself master of his craft. Breathlessly, Dan awaited the next act in the drama.
It was not what he expected. A bare fraction of a second before the peregrine struck his prey the thought had flashed through Dan's mind that the falcon could not possibly kill his huge adversary at a single blow. Cloud King would strike again and again, the mountaineer expected, forcing the turkey down with repeated blows and finally stunning him or tearing open his throat. The next moment revealed the woodsman's mistake. That one blow had been enough. The gobbler was falling, shooting down at a steep slant, his neck outstretched, his wings rigidly extended.
Dan knew at a glance that the life had all but gone out of the big bird, that he either was dying or else was stunned. Eagerly the mountaineer watched as the gobbler shot downward, expecting each instant to see the triumphant peregrine disengage himself from his victim. Faster and faster fell the turkey, his wings half closed now, his neck still stretched to its utmost length; and for an instant Dan believed that he distinguished the form of the hawk clinging to the larger bird's back.
To the very last he looked to see Cloud King leap from the feathered steed he was riding. Not until gobbler and falcon had crashed together into the tree-tops a hundred yards or so down the slope did the woodsman realize that in this game of life and death which he had witnessed something had gone amiss. He marked the spot where the birds had fallen close to a gigantic tulip poplar overtopping the other trees on the mountainside. Then, snatching up his rifle, he hurried down the slope.
Within ten minutes he found them. The gobbler lay dead, his wings spread wide, his neck twisted under him. He had either been killed in the air by the impact of the falcon's hard muscular body or else he had killed himself when he crashed stunned and helpless into the branches of the trees.
Upon the bronze body of his victim stood Cloud King. The peregrine swayed weakly, turning his head from side to side and peering uncertainly about him; and Dan knew that for the moment at least the hawk was incapable of flight. Plainly the breath had been knocked out of him, and probably for a few minutes before Dan's arrival he had lain unconscious.
Quickly the woodsman leaned his rifle against a sapling and slipped off his coat. The gleam of excitement in his eyes had given way now to a twinkle of gratification. The gobbler was his, after all; and, better even than that, Cloud King, the buccaneer of Devilhead, the murderer of grouse and quail, was in his power at last. He could have shot the falcon as he perched dazed and impotent on the turkey's carcass. But why waste powder and bullet when it was just as easy to wring the rascal's neck?
Holding his coat in his hand, Dan approached cautiously. It was the work of a moment to throw the coat over the hawk so as to prevent him from using bill or claws. Then, folding his captive in the coat, Dan tried to lift him, only to find that the hawk's talons were still embedded in the turkey's back just above and beside the neck. He understood then why Cloud King, after delivering his blow, had ridden his victim down into the bristling tree-tops through which the turkey had fallen.
With some difficulty Dan worked the long curved claws loose from the tough muscle and sinew into which they had been driven. Then, sitting on a rock close to the turkey's body, and gripping the falcon's legs above the talons to hold him upright, he lifted the coat carefully and looked at his prisoner.
For some minutes the young woodsman sat in silence, gazing fixedly at the peregrine. The light had returned to Cloud King's eyes. They were no longer dazed and dull. On the contrary, all their accustomed fierceness and alertness had come back to them; and it seemed to Dan that never before had he looked into eyes so proud and fearless as these.
Cloud King made no attempt to free himself. As the minutes passed, it was evident that his strength was returning rapidly. Yet he did not flutter or struggle, and although Dan had now removed the coat altogether, the peregrine did not try to strike with his strong hooked bill. He simply held himself erect in the grip of his captor and awaited, with no visible trace of fear, the doom which was surely at hand.
After long minutes Dan rose to his feet. His gray eyes were shining, but the light in them was not fierce.
"Cloud King," he said, "you're game; you're game clean through. I was going to wring your neck, but I've changed my mind."
With a quick motion of his arm, he tossed the hawk into the air. Cloud King's long wings opened, and swiftly, buoyantly he circled upward, then shot away over the valley. Dan watched him thoughtfully for a few minutes as he sped northward toward Devilhead Peak. Then the young mountaineer turned to examine the great bronze gobbler which had so strangely become his prize.