The Way of the Wild (Sass)/The War of the Kings
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KOE-ISHTO, the puma, whom the Cherokees called the Cat of God, was king of the mountain forests; but Storm-Rider, the great golden eagle of Younaguska peak, was lord of all the blue empire of the air. As is often the way with monarchs whose kingdoms lie close together, there was a certain rivalry between these two and some day there would be a reckoning. At least this was what Little Wolf, son of Sanuta the War Captain, said to himself, and to certain others, though whether he believed it or only pretended to believe it even Pakale the Blossom did not know.
Little Wolf, the young Cherokee brave, just now coming to manhood, was at once a warrior and a dreamer. Straight as a poplar, lithe as a panther, keen of eye and sharp of ear, he was already a better hunter than many tribesmen of riper years and longer experience. Yet, man of action though he was, expert with the bow and the spear, tireless on the hunting trail and versed in all the stratagems of the forest, his active brain found time and inclination to weave strange fancies about the wild-folk of the woods.
Often these fancies were not fancies at all but truths unperceived or unrealized by duller minds. Sometimes they were romantic imaginings in which he indulged for the fun of it, knowing all the while that they were imaginative but delighting in them, nevertheless, because they invested the wild creatures with a certain glamour and mystery. So, when Little Wolf told Kana the Conjurer that there was war between Koe-Ishto, the puma of Unaka Kanoos, and Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, Kana scarcely knew how seriously to take the young brave's words.
For a few moments the old magician turned the matter over in his mind as he squatted in the sun outside his hut near the middle of the Cherokee town. Very proud of his wisdom was Kana and very jealous of any man, especially any young man, who sought to tell him something he did not know. Yet he was cautious, too, and he could not afford to be caught in a mistake. To be caught by Little Wolf would be bitter indeed, for he disliked Little Wolf for various reasons, and most of all because of the young warrior's affection for Pakale the Blossom. At last, however, Kana made up his mind that this time he was on safe ground. He grunted scornfully.
"Behold," he said to the half-dozen young braves sitting in a half circle in front of him, "Little Wolf brings us more of his strange wisdom. He tells us now that Koe-Ishto, the king of the woods, is at war with the king of the air, who has his home on Younaguska, the sacred mountain. Yet all men know that the paths of the puma and the eagle do not cross, that each rules his own kingdom and is High Chief there, and that no enmity lies between them. Behold, all ye, how Little Wolf's wisdom is deceit. If what he says is truth, let him prove it. Till then let him stand silent among his betters."
Little Wolf made no reply. Kana was a power in the tribe. Even the son of a War Captain could not dispute him too boldly. But the young warrior's dark eyes gleamed, the muscles of his bare red-brown arms rippled and tightened as he clenched his hands in anger.
He knew that Kana disliked him, but never before had the conjurer rebuked him publicly. He knew also that unless he could prove the truth of what he had said, his repute among the young men must rest under a cloud. Little Wolf realized that a hard task lay before him, one that would tax his woodcraft to the utmost.
For three days he went his way as usual. But he could not help noticing the changed attitude of the other young warriors and the averted glances of Pakale the Blossom. The Blossom had many suitors. She need not look at one who had been held up to scorn before his fellows. Besides, she was tempted to teach Little Wolf a lesson which in her opinion he needed—a lesson on the unwisdom of stirring Kana's wrath.
On the afternoon of the third day Little Wolf sought out Pakale's brother, Striking Hawk, a young man of about his own age, who was his closest friend; and the next day at dawn the two went out together into the forest and were gone for many days. But before they went Little Wolf sent a message to Kana the Conjurer.
"Tell Kana," he said, "that on the thirtieth day Little Wolf will return to prove him a false prophet."
It was a daring challenge and the village rang with it. The warriors scowled and shook their heads. They feared that the young brave had attempted the impossible; and they knew that if he failed, he would not return.
Noiseless as a ghost, Koe-Ishto, the puma of Unaka Kanoos, stole along a dim winding tunnel threading the dense rhododendron thicket of Crystal Run. His padded feet fell soft as velvet on the damp carpet of dead leaves; his long, lithe, yellow-brown form moved amid the crooked rhododendron stems with the sinuousness of a snake; his round, inscrutable eyes gleamed cold and hard like pallid, polished jewels. So soundless was his passage that even the marvelous ears of a horned owl, dozing through the daylight hours in the obscurity of the thicket, failed to record the great cat's coming.
Koe-Ishto, gliding around a bend of the path, saw the big bird perched on a bough some fifteen feet above the ground, his back turned; and for a half-second the puma paused, the tip of his tail twitching to and fro, his cold eyes measuring the distance. It would be a long, high leap, yet it might be accomplished. Koe-Ishto tightened his muscles for the mighty effort which would launch his sinewy body forward and upward; but at that moment from far away to the left a sound came to his ears.
It was the gobble of a wild turkey cock; and in a flash it sent Koe-Ishto's thoughts back to the business in hand—the mission which had brought him down from the heights of Unaka Kanoos to the rhododendron tangles bordering the bank of Crystal Run.
The big puma was a rather fastidious feeder. He would take all prey that came to him, all prey that he could capture with little effort; but in a land abounding with deer, wild turkeys and ruffed grouse, he seldom exerted himself in pursuit of smaller or less succulent game. The deer were his mainstay—his staple diet; but he had fed abundantly on venison the day before, and now he was sensible of a craving for the taste of fish or of birds. After his ample meal of deer's meat he had slept long; in fact, contrary to his custom, he had slept not only through the rest of that day but also during practically the whole night. Not until dawn had he awakened; and it was then that the craving for fish or fowl had come upon him.
It was spring; and Koe-Ishto had no occupation at that season except the satisfying of his own appetite. The time of mating was long past. The family of four playful, yellowish, spotted cubs in the cave near the summit of Unaka Kanoos were looked after by their mother, who ministered to them with devoted care and also did her own hunting. Koe-Ishto, unburdened by domestic duties, gave no thought to the cave on Unaka Kanoos but set out immediately in search of the delicate food which he desired.
For an hour he had followed the little mountain river down its narrow gorge-like valley, jumping lightly from rock to rock, leaping with marvelous agility and grace from one to another of the gray boulders which strewed the river's bed. A dozen times he had crouched, motionless as the rocks themselves, close by deep dark pools where many trout lurked, his great paw raised, ready for the lightninglike blow which would scoop some unwary fish out of the water; but not once in any of those pools had a trout risen to the surface within reach of that mighty paw.
Koe-Ishto realized at last that on this morning the fish were not rising; and when he had reached the lower part of the valley, where the forested mountain-slopes on either side of the stream were less steep and the great rhododendron thicket of Crystal Run began, he decided to abandon his fishing and, instead, try his luck with the wild turkeys at a certain spot where he had captured many turkeys in the past. He was on his way to this spot when the gobble of a turkey interrupted his hastily formed design against the horned owl.
Koe-Ishto gave the owl not another thought. The big bird, drowsing on its perch, never knew how close it had been to death, though it was startled out of its accustomed composure when it saw the long tawny body of the puma glide past along the trail directly under it.
Koe-Ishto no longer moved slowly; he no longer paused at each bend of the winding trail to search the dim path ahead for possible prey. He moved swiftly, purposefully, wasting no time; but, if possible, he moved even more silently than before. No stick cracked under his velvet paws; if the leaves upon which he trod stirred, only the worms and insects of the mold were aware of it. So he came presently, like a dim, dreadful, pale-eyed ghost, to the edge of the thicket whence he could look out upon the spot which he had often utilized as a turkey ambush.
The path had brought him back again to the river; but the character of the stream had changed. At this point Crystal Run was no longer a narrow brawling mountain torrent, rushing swiftly amid great tumbled masses of rock, foaming in white waterfalls over sharp ledges under which lay dark, still, seemingly bottomless pools.
Here, where the valley was wider and flatter, the river had widened also and had become a placid shallow stream scarcely more than a foot in depth and perhaps fifty feet from shore to shore, flowing slowly over a flat bed of smooth rock and yellow sand. On the further bank the forest came down close to the water; but on the bank where the rhododendron thicket stood a clear space of level rock and dry sand intervened between the river margin and the edge of the thicket. Into this clear space an arm of the thicket, composed, however, not of rhododendrons but of alders, was thrust almost to the water's edge, forming a sort of hedge as straight as if some careful gardener had lined the bushes there.
Koe-Ishto, the puma, did not know why the wild turkeys of the mountain woods were in the habit of coming often to this shallow part of the river to drink. He did not know why so many of them, when they had slaked their thirst, turned and walked back across the space of flat rock and sand, passing within ten feet of the alder hedge. He knew only that this often happened, that it seemed to be a habit of the turkey kind. The fact alone interested him; the reasons did not matter.
From the thicket's edge his pale eyes searched the open space before him and roved up and down the stream, seeking the gobbler whose voice he had heard perhaps five minutes before. Then he stole slowly along the alder hedge nearly to its end and crouched there utterly motionless, completely invisible.
So still was he, so perfectly did his tawny body blend with the foliage of the screening alders and the yellow sand under them, that even the farsighted eyes of Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, failed to distinguish the outline of the puma's form. Yet, when a wood mouse scuttled across the flat surface of the rock near the alder hedge, Storm-Rider noted its passage instantly; and when a crayfish moved slowly across a little space of sand, the eyes of the soaring eagle picked it out and his gaze dwelt momentarily upon it.
But wood mice and crayfish were of no interest to Storm-Rider; and he was not looking for pumas either and entertained no expectation of finding one at that spot beside Crystal Run. No more than Koe-Ishto did the golden eagle understand why this particular spot was often visited by wild turkeys, and no more than Koe-Ishto was he interested in the why and wherefore of it. But just as well as the puma knew it, the eagle knew that turkeys came here often; and for the eagle of Younaguska, as well as for the great cat of Unaka Kanoos, the place had often proved a profitable hunting ground.
Unaka Kanoos reared its rocky summit near at hand. The loftier dome of Younaguska, the sacred mountain, was many miles distant. But to Storm-Rider the leagues of air were nothing. His kingdom was broad; his hunting ground stretched as far as his tireless wings could bear him in a day. For fifty miles on every side of his home on Younaguska he ruled the airy spaces above the Overhills, as the Cherokees called the high mountains; and at any spot in that vast domain he might appear at any moment to claim his booty. He circled now on motionless wings high above the shoals of Crystal Run because he, too, had become suddenly aware that morning of a craving for turkey-meat.
For some five minutes the fierce frowning eyes of the soaring eagle had been searching with peculiar intensity the margins of the open space beside the river. He, also, had heard the turkey-call which had come to the ears of Koe-Ishto in the rhododendron thicket. From his post in the air he had been able to note accurately the direction from which the sound had come; and since then he had been waiting impatiently but confidently for the gobbler to emerge from the woods and walk across the open to the water's edge.
Suddenly the long yellow-brown body of the puma crouching in the alder hedge quivered and grew tense and hard; and in that same moment the head of the circling eagle dropped lower, his great yellow feet with their armament of black trenchant claws opened and shut convulsively, his deep-set eyes glowed momentarily as though a flash of inner fire had lit them. A half-minute more he circled quietly, his eyes never shifting from his prey. Then, his dark wings half-closed his banded tail spread, his talons opened wide beneath him, he shot downward through the singing air.
Few of the wild folk are blessed with keener hearing than the wild turkey. Yet because the roar of a distant waterfall filled the air, a fatal moment elapsed before the gobbler sensed a strange, low, humming sound, faint yet somehow portentous and menacing. Instantly he turned and raced for the thododendron thicket. Another quarter-second and he would have been safe within its barricade of stiff, unyielding branches; but twenty feet from its portals a great dark shape fell upon him from the sky, struck long needle-pointed claws into his neck and breast, slashed his throat with a hooked knife-edged beak which ripped through feathers and flesh and severed his wind-pipe.
Storm-Rider the golden eagle stood for a moment upon the quivering body of his victim, his wings half-spread, his proud head lifted high. Then with a scream he tore his talons loose from the turkey's body and with quick, powerful wing-beats lifted himself into the air.
He was just in time. From the hedge of alders forty feet to his right, a great tawny form was racing across the sand in long bounds. High over the bleeding prostrate turkey Koe-Ishto the puma leaped, and landing on a bare space of level rock just beyond, launched his long sinewy body upward. A big furry paw, bristling with curved retractile claws, swished like a flail not six inches under the eagle.
For a fraction of a second the fierce eyes of the king of the air looked into the pale glittering orbs of the king of the forest. Then, as the eagle's laboring wings lifted him higher, Koe-Ishto turned, walked slowly back to where the gobbler lay, picked up the big bronze bird in his jaws, and carried it towards the thicket's edge, while the eagle, screaming with rage, circled well above him.
The white man has learned about birds and beasts many things which the red man never learned—things which only the white man's science could discover. But there are other things which the red man knew or believed and which are still dark to the white newcomer. This is so because the red man lived very close to the wild folk of the woods, the waters and the air, and because his very life depended on his knowledge of the wild folk.
The red man knew the great golden eagle of the mountain forests as no white man has ever known that mighty bird; and Little Wolf, the young Cherokee brave, who was a dreamer as well as a great hunter, knew the eagle even better than most of his fellows. So it may be that Little Wolf was right in his belief that it was not mere chance which brought about the strange thing that happened at the cave on Unaka Kanoos where Koe-Ishto's mate kept watch over her brood of four spotted yellowish kittens.
The sun rose that morning in a clear sky; and presently, when it had risen well above the purple wall of mountains rimming the eastern horizon, its slanting rays warmed and dried the flat shelf of rock in front of Koe-Ishto's cave. Koe-Ishto's tawny mate, nursing her little ones just within the cave's entrance, noted this fact with joy. For days a steady drizzle had kept the puma cubs under cover. A wetting might not have harmed them, but they did not like the feel of the rain on their backs. So they had stayed inside the cave; and now their mother welcomed the sunshine because, like most human mothers, she liked her little ones to romp and play outdoors.
The wide flat ledge in front of the cave made a splendid playground for the cubs. They were safe there, for no Indian hunter had ever invaded the puma's almost inaccessible lair on the precipitous slope of Unaka Kanoos, while the preying beasts of the forests stood too much in dread of the great lionlike cats ever to approach their dwelling-place.
True, the ledge ended in a sheer drop of perhaps a hundred feet to the wooded mountain side below, and a human onlooker might on that account have considered it a perilous nursery. But the puma cubs were in no danger of falling over the ledge. Young as they were, they were wonderfully sure-footed, blessed with a marvelous gift for keeping their balance. Their mother could leave them wrestling and tussling on the ledge within a foot of its brink and remain away for hours without feeling the slightest anxiety regarding their safety.
On this morning, the first sunny morning in many days, the mother puma cut short the breakfast of her nursing kittens. She, too, disliked the rain and had postponed her hunting, remaining in the cave throughout the previous night; and now she was hungry and was eager to find meat. Presently she pushed the kittens away from her, rose, walked out upon the ledge, yawned hugely and stretched her long lithe body. Then, with a low farewell to the cubs which had followed her outside, she walked to the end of the ledge around a jutting shoulder of the rock, leaped to the slanting trunk of a big chestnut oak, and gliding lightly down its rough surface, disappeared into the forest.
Some two hours later a black speck appeared in the sky high above the summit of Unaka Kanoos. For many minutes it swung there, moving in circles and ellipses, gradually growing larger. The puma cubs, playing on the sunny ledge in front of their cave, either did not see it or, if they saw it, paid no attention to it.
Neither instinct nor the teaching, which, even at that early age, they might have had from their mother, had ever warned them of danger from above. Probably they knew vaguely that the air was peopled, for doubtless from time to time they had seen turkey vultures or a solitary raven or duckhawk pass over; but never had any harm come to them from these aerial wayfarers which as yet were the only ones among the wild folk that their eyes had ever looked upon.
Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, looked down from the high air and saw on a sunny ledge of Unaka Kanoos four small furry creatures which moved erratically here and there. Whether or not he knew what they were; whether or not he recognized them as the young of Koe-Ishto the puma; whether or not there flashed into his brain at that moment memory of the morning not long ago when Koe-Ishto had robbed him of his prey—these are questions which no man can answer. But certain it is that, after watching them for a while, he spiraled gradually downward for perhaps five hundred feet, then closed his wide wings and plunged.
If the puma cubs heard the low hum of his coming, they did not know what it was or what it meant. If they saw that living spearhead shooting down from the sky, pinions half-opened now, widespread talons thrust beneath it, trenchant beak pointing straight downward, they saw it too late to regain the shelter of the cave.
Storm-Rider chose as his target the cub which happened to be closest to the brink of the precipice. A moment the baby pumas crouched in terror as the air, buffeted by mighty wings, swirled and eddied around them. Then curved grappling hooks closed upon one of them and lifted him from the rock. In the ears of the three others rang the golden eagle's scream of triumph as he swept outward from the ledge with his victim.
In front of the round hut of Kana the Conjurer the braves of the Cherokee town sat in a half-circle, their bronze faces lit by the fire burning in front of Kana's low door. Behind the braves stood the women and girls, Pakale the Blossom in their midst. Facing the throng, Kana sat at one side of the fire. At the other side, wearing the ornaments and feathers which were symbols of their rank, sat Tiftoe, the aged chief, and Sanuta, the War Captain, father of Little Wolf.
Little Wolf stood in the center in the full light of the fire; and beside him, resting his hand on a large object over which a deerskin had been thrown, stood his friend Striking Hawk, Pakale's brother. Little Wolf spoke, addressing himself to the chief.
"I have come," he said, "as I promised. For many days and nights I have kept watch in the woods with Striking Hawk, my comrade. I have come to prove Kana a false conjurer whose wisdom is deceit. Listen and I will relate what we have seen, and Striking Hawk will tell you if I lie.
"Kana put shame upon me because I said that there was war between Koe-Ishto, the Cat of God, whose lair is on Unaka Kanoos, and Storm-Rider, the eagle of Younaguska, the sacred mountain. Kana said that I lied.
"For many days, with Striking Hawk by my side, I watched in the woods where Koe-Ishto hunts and searched the air where Storm-Rider seeks his prey. My task was hard, for the forest is vast and many things happen there unseen. But I knew where to look and the Great Spirit was good. One morning, by the shoals of the Crystal Water, where the turkeys drink, we saw Storm-Rider fall from the air upon a turkey, and saw Koe-Ishto the puma leap from his ambush and rob the eagle of his prey."
A murmur ran around the circle of braves. A louder murmur was heard among the women and girls. But Little Wolf raised his hand.
"It was good," he said, "but it was not enough. The spirit told me to keep watch at the cave where Koe-Ishto's mate nurses her little ones. For three days we watched there, hidden on the mountain side in a place which I knew; and the Spirit sent rain and a favoring breeze so that Koe-Ishto's mate never scented us nor knew that we were near. And on the fourth morning, when the she-puma had gone out to get meat, we saw Storm-Rider, the eagle, fall from the sky and seize a cub in his claws."
Kana the Conjurer rose, drew to its full height his lean body streaked with paint and decked with feathers, and pointed an accusing finger at the young brave.
"Little Wolf lies," he cried in a high cracked voice. "His words are empty as wind. Let him be dry-scratched with snakes' teeth and scourged from the town with rawhide thongs. For he comes with lies, bringing no proof, and such as he cannot dwell among us."
Little Wolf turned to Striking Hawk and spoke a guttural word. The latter, with a quick motion, removed the deerskin covering the object at his feet. The eager braves saw a large cage made of willow withes. On a perch in the cage stood a splendid golden eagle.
Little Wolf spoke again.
"I bring proofs which all must believe," he said. "With a blunt arrow I shot at Storm-Rider as he flew over our ambush with the cub. It was a far shot, but again the Spirit was good. The blunt arrow struck the eagle's wing and brought him down. This is he in the cage—Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska. When his wing is healed, I will set him free."
The young warrior paused for a moment, his gaze fixed on Kana. But the Conjurer was staring with wide panic-stricken eyes at Striking Hawk who, almost unnoticed, had slipped for a moment out of the glare of the firelight to the spot where his sister, Pakale the Blossom, stood among the maidens. Pakale had given him something which she had kept concealed under her loose garment and the youth was now returning with it to his post beside his friend.
Little Wolf laughed in triumph.
"Kana sees his doom," he cried. "He sees in Striking Hawk's hand the puma cub, the whelp of Koe-Ishto, which Storm-Rider captured. Let him come nearer and he can see on it the marks of Storm-Rider's claws."
The young brave turned and faced Tiftoe, the aged chief.
"Now let it be known," he said in a low tone which was his tribute to the chief's authority, "whether it is Little Wolf, or Kana, the false conjurer, that must be scourged from the town."