Wisdom of the Wilderness/Mustela of the Lone Hand
IT was in the very heart of the ancient wood—the forest primeval of the north, gloomy with the dark-green, crowded ranks of fir and spruce and hemlock, and tangled with the huge windfalls of countless storm-torn winters. But now, at high noon of the glowing northern summer, the gloom was pierced to its depths with shafts of radiant sun; the barred and checkered transparent brown shadows hummed with dancing flies; the warm air was alive with the small, thin notes of chick-a-dee and nuthatch, varied now and then by the impertinent scolding of the Canada jay; and the drowsing tree tops steamed up an incense of balsamy fragrance in the heat. The ancient wildness dreamed, stretched itself all open to the sun, and seemed to sigh with immeasurable content.
High up in the grey trunk of a half-dead forest giant was a round hole, the entrance to what had been the nest of a pair of big, red-headed, golden-winged woodpeckers, or "yellow hammers." The big woodpeckers had long since been dispossessed—the female, probably, caught and devoured, with her eggs, upon the nest. The dispossessor, and present tenant, was Mustela.
Framed in the blackness of the round hole was a sharp-muzzled, triangular, golden-brown face with high, pointed ears, looking out upon the world below with keen eyes in which a savage wildness and an alert curiosity were incongruously mingled. Nothing that went on upon the dim ground far below, among the tangled trunks and windfalls, or in the sun-drenched tree tops, escaped that restless and piercing gaze. But Mustela had fed well and felt lazy, and this hour of noon was not his hunting hour; so the most unsuspecting red squirrel, gathering cones in a neighboring pine, was insufficient to lure him from his rest, and the plumpest hare, waving its long, suspicious ears down among ground shadows, only made him lick his lips and think what he would do later on in the afternoon, when he felt like it.
Presently, however, a figure came into view at sight of which Mustela's expression changed. His thin, black lips wrinkled back in a soundless snarl, displaying the full length of his long, snow-white, deadly sharp canines, and a red spark of hate smoldered in his bright eyes. But no less than his hate was his curiosity—a curiosity which is the most dangerous weakness of all Mustela's tribe. Mustela's pointed head stretched itself clear of the hole, in order to get a better look at the man who was passing below his tree.
A man was a rare sight in that remote and inaccessible section of the northern wilderness. This particular man—a woodsman, a "timber cruiser," seeking out new and profitable areas for the work of the lumbermen—wore a flaming red-and-orange handkerchief loosely knotted about his brawny neck, and carried over his shoulder an axe whose bright blade flashed sharply whenever a ray of sunlight struck it. It was this flashing axe, and the blazing color of the scarlet-and-orange kerchief, that excited Mustela's curiosity—so excited it, indeed, that he came clean out of the hole and circled the great trunk, clinging close and wide-legged like a squirrel, in order to keep the woodsman in view as he passed by.
Engrossed though he was in the interesting figure of the man, Mustela's vigilance was still unsleeping. His amazingly quick ears, at this moment, caught a hushed hissing of wings in the air above his head. He did not stop to look up and investigate. Like a streak of ruddy light he flashed around the trunk and whisked back into his hole—and just as he vanished a magnificent, long-winged goshawk, the king of all the falcons, swooping down from the blue, struck savagely with his clutching talons at the edge of the hole.
The quickness of Mustela was miraculous. Moreover, he was not content with escape. He wanted vengeance. Even in his lightning dive into his refuge he had managed to turn about, doubling on himself like an eel. And now, as those terrible talons gripped and clung for half a second to the edge of the hole, he snapped his teeth securely into the last joint of the longest talon, and dragged it in an inch or two.
With a yelp of fury and surprise the great falcon strove to lift himself into the air, pounding madly with his splendid wings, and twisting himself about, and thrusting mightily with his free foot against the side of the hole. But he found himself held fast, as in a trap. Sagging back with all his weight, Mustela braced himself securely with all four feet and hung on, his whipcord sinews set like steel. He knew that if he let go for an instant to secure a better mouthful his enemy would escape; so he just worried and chewed at the joint of the huge talon, satisfied with the punishment he was inflicting.
Meanwhile the woodsman, his attention drawn by that one sudden yelp of the falcon and by the prolonged and violent buffeting of wings, had turned back to see what was going on. Pausing at the foot of Mustela's tree he peered upward with narrowed eyes. A slow smile wrinkled his weather-beaten face. He did not like hawks. For a moment or two he stood wondering what it was in the hole that could hold so powerful a bird. Whatever it was, he stood for it.
Being a dead shot with the revolver, he seldom troubled to carry a rifle in his "cruisings." Drawing his long barreled "Smith and Wesson" from his belt he took careful aim, and fired. At the sound of the shot the thing in the hole was startled, and let go; and the great bird, turning once over slowly in the air, dropped to his feet with a feathery thud, its talons still contracting shudderingly. The woodsman glanced up—and there, framed in the dark of the hole, was the little, yellow face of Mustela, insatiably curious, snarling down upon him viciously.
"Gee," muttered the woodsman, "I might hev' knowed it was one o' them bloody martens! Nobody else o' that size 'ud hev' the gall to tackle a duck hawk!"
Now the fur of Mustela, the pine marten or American sable, is a fur of price. But the woodsman—subject, like most of his kind, to unexpected attacks of sentiment and imagination—felt that to shoot the defiant fighter would be like an act of treachery to an ally.
"Ye're a pretty fighter, Sonny," said he, with a whimsical grin, "an' ye may keep that yellow pelt o' yourn, for all o' me!"
Then he picked up the dead falcon, tied its claws together, slung it upon his axe, and strode through the trees. He wanted to keep those splendid wings as a present for his girl at the settlements.
Highly satisfied with his victory over the mighty falcon—for which he took the full credit to himself—Mustela now retired to the bottom of his comfortable, moss-lined nest, and curled himself up to sleep away the heat of the day. As the heat grew sultrier and drowsier through the still hours of early afternoon, there fell upon the forest a heavy silence, deepened rather than broken by the faint hum of the heat-loving flies. And the spicy scents of pine and spruce and tamarack steamed forth richly upon the moveless air.
When the shadows of the trunks began to lengthen, Mustela woke up. And he woke up hungry. Slipping out of his hole he ran a little way down the trunk and then leaped, lightly and nimbly as a squirrel, into the branches of a big hemlock which grew close to his own tree. Here, in a crotch from which he commanded a good view beneath the foliage, he halted and stood motionless, peering about him for some sign of a likely quarry.
Poised thus, tense, erect, and vigilant, Mustela was a picture of beauty, swift and fierce. In color he was of a rich golden brown, with a patch of brilliant yellow covering throat and chest. His tail was long and bushy, to serve him as a balance in his long, squirrel-like leaps from tree to tree. His pointed ears were large and alert, to catch all the faint, elusive, forest sounds. In length, being a specially fine specimen of his kind, he was perhaps a couple of inches over two feet. His body had all the lithe grace of a weasel, with something of the strength of his great cousin and most dreaded foe, the fisher.
For a time nothing stirred. Then from a distance, came faint but shrill the chirr-r-r-r of a red squirrel. Mustela's discriminating ear located the sound at once. All energy on the instant, he darted toward it springing from branch to branch with amazing speed and noiselessness.
The squirrel, noisy and imprudent after the manner of his tribe, was chattering fussily and bouncing about on his branch, excited over something best known to himself, when a darting, gold-brown shape of doom landed upon the end of the branch, not half a dozen feet from him. With a screech of warning and terror he bounded into the air, alighted on the trunk, and raced up it, with Mustela close upon his heels. Swift as he was—and everyone who has seen a red squirrel in a hurry knows how he can move—Mustela was swifter; and in about five seconds the little chatterer's fate would have been sealed. But he knew what he was about. This was his own tree. Had it been otherwise, he would have sprung into another and directed his desperate flight over the slenderest branches, where his enemy's greater weight would be a hindrance. As it was, he managed to gain his hole—just in time. And all that Mustela got was a little mouthful of fur from the tip of that vanishing red tail.
Very angry and disappointed, and hissing like a cat, Mustela jammed his savage face into the hole. He could see the squirrel crouched, with pounding heart and panic-stricken eyes, a few inches below him, just out of his reach. The hole was too small to admit his head. In a rage he tore at the edges with his powerful claws, but the wood was too hard for him to make any impression on it; and after half a minute of futile scratching he gave up in disgust and raced off down the tree. A moment later the squirrel poked his head out and shrieked an effectual warning to every creature within earshot.
With that loud alarm shrilling in his ears, Mustela knew there would be no successful hunting for him till he could put himself beyond range of it. He raced on, therefore, abashed by his failure, till the taunting sound faded in the distance. Then his bushy, brown brush went up in the air again, and his wonted look of insolent self-confidence returned. As it did not seem to be his lucky day for squirrels, he descended to earth and began quartering the ground for the fresh trail of a rabbit.
In that section of the forest where Mustela now found himself the dark and scented tangle of spruce and balsam fir was broken by patches of stony barren, clothed unevenly by thickets of stunted white birch, and silver-leafed, quaking aspen, and wild sumach with its massive tufts of acrid, dark-crimson bloom. Here the rabbit trails were abundant, and Mustela was not long in finding one fresh enough to offer him the prospect of a speedy kill. Swiftly and silently, nose to earth, he set himself to follow its intricate and apparently aimless windings, sure that he would come upon a rabbit at the end of it.
As it chanced, however, he never came to the end of that particular trail or set his teeth in the throat of that particular rabbit. In gliding past a bushy, young fir tree he happened to glance beneath it, and marked another of his tribe tearing the feathers from a newly slain grouse. The stranger was smaller and slighter than himself, a young female—quite possibly, indeed, his mate of a few months earlier in the season. Such considerations were less than nothing to Mustela, whose ferocious spirit knew neither gallantry, chivalry, nor mercy. With what seemed a single flashing leap he was upon her. Or almost—for the slim female was no longer there. She had bounded away as lightly and instantaneously as if blown by the wind of his coming. She knew Mustela—and she knew it would be death to stay and do battle for her kill. Spitting with rage and fear she fled from the spot, terrified lest he should pursue her and find the nest where her six precious kittens were concealed.
But Mustela was too hungry to be interested, just then, in mere slaughter for its own sake. He was feeling serious and practical. The grouse was a full-grown cock, plump and juicy, and when Mustela had devoured it his appetite was sated. But not so his blood lust. After a hasty toilet he set out again, looking for something to kill.
Crossing the belt of rocky ground he emerged upon a flat tract of treeless barren covered with a dense growth of blueberry bushes about a foot in height. The bushes at this season were loaded with ripe fruit, of a bright blue color; and squatting among them was a big, black bear, enjoying the banquet at his ease. Gathering the berries together wholesale with his great, furry paws he was cramming them into his mouth greedily, with little grunts and gurgles of delight; and the juicy fragments with which his snout and jaws were smeared gave his formidable face an absurdly childish look. To Mustela—when that insolent little animal flashed before him—he vouchsafed no more than a glance of good-natured contempt. For the rank and stringy flesh of a pine marten he had no use at any time of year, least of all in the season when the blueberries were ripe.
Mustela, however, was too discreet to pass within reach of one of those huge but nimble paws, lest the happy bear should grow playful under the stimulus of the blueberry juice. He turned aside to a judicious distance; and there, sitting up on his hind quarters like a rabbit, he proceeded to nibble, rather superciliously, a few of the choicest berries. He was not enthusiastic over vegetable food. But, just as a cat will now and then eat grass, he liked at times a little change in his unvarying diet of flesh.
Having soon had enough of the blueberry patch, Mustela left it to the bear, and turned back toward the deep of the forest, where he felt most at home. He went stealthily, following up the wind in order that his scent might not give warning of his approach. It was getting near sunset by this time, and floods of pinky gold, washing across the open barrens, poured in along the ancient corridors of the forest, touching the somber trunks with stains of tenderest rose. In this glowing color Mustela, with his ruddy fur, moved almost invisible.
And so moving, he came plump upon a big buck rabbit, squatting half asleep in the center of a clump of pale-green fern.
The rabbit bounded straight into the air, his big, childish eyes popping from his head with horror. Mustela's leap was equally instantaneous. And it was unerring. He struck his victim in mid-air, and his fangs met deep in the rabbit's throat. With a scream the rabbit fell backward and came down with a muffled thump upon the ferns, with Mustela on top of him. There was a brief, thrashing struggle; and then Mustela, his forepaws upon the breast of his still-quivering prey (several times larger and heavier than himself), lifted his blood-stained face and stared about him savagely, as if defying all the other prowlers of the forest to come and try to rob him of his prize.
Having eaten his fill, Mustela dragged the remnants of the carcass under a thick bush, defiled it so as to make it distasteful to other eaters of flesh, and scratched a lot of dead leaves and twigs over it till it was effectually hidden. As game was abundant at this season, and as he always preferred a fresh kill, he was not likely to want any more of that victim; but he hated the thought of any rival profiting from his prowess.
Mustela now turned his steps homeward, traveling more lazily, but with eyes, nose, and ears ever on the alert for fresh quarry. Though his appetite was sated for some hours, he was as eager as ever for the hunt, for the fierce joy of killing and taste of the hot blood. But the Unseen Powers of the Wilderness, ironic and impartial, decided just then that it was time for Mustela to he hunted in his turn.
If there was one creature above all others who could strike the fear of death into Mustela's merciless soul it was his great cousin, the ferocious and implacable fisher. Of twice his weight and thrice his strength, and his full petr in swiftness and cunning, the fisher was Mustela's nightmare, from whom there was no escape except in the depth of some hole too narrow for the fisher's powerful shoulders to get into. And at this moment—there was the fisher's grinning, blackmuzzled mask crouched in the path before him, eyeing him with the sneer of certain triumph.
Mustela's heart jumped into his throat, as he flashed about and fled for his life—straight away, alas, from his safe hole in the tree top. And with the lightning dart of a striking rattler the fisher was after him.
Mustela had a start of perhaps twenty paces, and for a time he held his own. He dared no tricks, lest he should lose ground, for he knew his foe was as swift and as cunning as himself. Rut he knew himself stronger and more enduring than most of his tribe, and therefore he put his hope, for the most part, in his endurance. Moreover, there was always a chance that he might come upon some hole or crevice too narrow for his pursuer. Indeed, to a tough and indomitable spirit like Mustela's, until his enemy's fangs should finally lock themselves in his throat, there would always seem to be a chance. On and on he raced, therefore, tearing madly up or down the long, sloping trunks of ancient windfalls, springing in great, airy leaps from trunk to rock, from rock to overhanging branch, in silence; and ever at his heels followed the relentless, grinning shape of his pursuer, gaining a little in the long leaps, but losing a little in the denser thickets, and so just about keeping his distance.
For all Mustela's endurance, the end of that race, in all probability, would have been for him but one swift, screeching fight, and then the dark. But at this juncture the Fates woke up and remembered some grudge against the fisher.
A moment later Mustela, just launching himself on a desperate leap, beheld in his path a huge hornets' nest suspended from a branch near the ground. Well he knew, and respected, that terrible insect, the great, black hornet with the cream-white stripes about its body. But it was too late to turn aside. He crashed against the grey, papery sphere, tearing it from its cables, and flashed on, with half a dozen white-hot stings in his hind quarters. Swerving slightly he dashed through a dense thicket hoping not only to scrape his fiery tormentors off but at the same time to gain a little on his big pursuer.
The fisher was at this stage not more than a dozen paces in the rear. He arrived, to his undoing, just as the outraged hornets poured out in a furiously humming swarm from their overturned nest. With deadly unanimity they pounced upon the fisher.
With a startled screech the fisher bounced aside and plunged for shelter. But he was too late. The great hornets were all over him. His ears and nostrils were black with them. His eyes, shut tight, were already a flaming anguish with the corroding poison of their stings. Frantically he burrowed his face into the moist earth; and madly he clawed at his ears, crushing scores of his tormentors. But he could not crush out the venom which their long stings had injected. Finding it hopeless to free himself from their swarms he tore madly through the underbrush—but blindly, crashing into trunks and rocks, heedless of everything but the fiery torture which enveloped him. Gradually the hornets fell away from him as he went, knowing that their vengeance was accomplished. At last, groping his way blindly into a crevice between two rocks, he thrust his head down into the moss; and there, a few days later, his swollen body was found by a foraging lynx. The lynx was hungry, but she only sniffed at the carcass and turned away with a growl of disappointment and suspicion.
Mustela became aware, after some minutes, that he was no longer pursued. Incredulous at first, he at length came to the conclusion that the fisher had been discouraged by his superior speed and endurance. His heart swelled with triumph. By way of precaution he made a long detour to come back to his nest, ran up his tree and shpped comfortably into his hole, and curled up to sleep with the feeling of a day well spent. He had fed full, he had robbed his fellows successfully, he had drunk the blood of his victims, he had outwitted or eluded his enemies.
Now as the summer waned, and the first keen touch of autumn set the wilderness aflame with the scarlet of maple and sumach, Mustela, for all his abounding health and prosperous hunting, grew restless with a discontent which he could not understand. Of the coming winter he had no dread. He had passed through several winters, faring well and finding that deep nest of his in the old tree a snug refuge from the fiercest storms. But now, he knew not why, the nest grew irksome to him, and his familiar hunting grounds distasteful. Even the eager hunt, the triumphant kill itself, had lost their zest. He forgot to kill except when he was hungry. A strange fever was in his blood, a lust for wandering. And so, one wistful, softly glowing day of Indian summer, when the violet light that bathed the forest was full of mystery and allurement, he set off on a journey. He had no thought of why he was going, or whither. When hungry, he stopped to hunt and kill and feed. But he no longer cared to conceal the remnants of his kills, for he dimly realized that he would not be returning. If running waters crossed his path, he swam them. If broad lakes intervened, he skirted them.
From time to time he became aware that others of his kind were moving with him—but each one furtive, silent, solitary, self-sufficing, like himself. He heeded them not, nor they him; but all, impelled by one urge which could but be blindly obeyed, kept drifting onward toward the west and north. At length, when the first snows began, Mustela stopped, in a forest not greatly different from that which he had left, but even wilder, denser, more unvisited by the foot of man. And here, the wanderlust having suddenly left his blood, he found himself a new hole, lined it warm with moss and dry grasses, and resumed his hunting with all the ancient zest.
Back in Mustela's old hunting grounds a lonely trapper, finding no more golden sable in his snares, but only mink and lynx and fox, grumbled regretfully:
"The martens hev quit. We'll see no more of 'em round these parts for another ten year."
But he had no notion why they had quit; nor had anyone else—not even Mustela himself.