In New England Fields and Woods Part 10

x.x.xVIII

THE RUFFED GROUSE

The woods in the older parts of our country possess scarcely a trait of the primeval forest. The oldest trees have a comparatively youthful appearance, and are pygmies in girth beside the decaying stumps of their giant ancestors. They are not so s.h.a.gged with moss nor so scaled with lichens. The forest floor has lost its ancient carpet of ankle-deep moss and the intricate maze of fallen trees in every stage of decay, and looks clean-swept and bare. The tangle of undergrowth is gone, many of the species which composed it having quite disappeared, as have many of the animals that flourished in the perennial shade of the old woods.

If in their season one sees and hears more birds among their lower interlaced branches, he is not likely to catch sight or sound of many of the denizens of the old wilderness. No startled deer bounds away before him, nor bear shuffles awkwardly from his feast of mast at one's approach, nor does one's flesh creep at the howl of the gathering wolves or the panther's scream or the rustle of his stealthy footsteps.

But as you saunter on your devious way you may hear a rustle of quick feet in the dry leaves and a sharp, insistent cry, a succession of short, high-pitched clucks running into and again out of a querulous "_ker-r-r-r_," all expressing warning as much as alarm. Your ears guide your eyes to the exact point from which the sounds apparently come, but if these are not keen and well trained they fail to detach any animate form from the inanimate dun and gray of dead leaves and underbrush.

With startling suddenness out of the monotony of lifeless color in an eddying flurry of dead leaves, fanned to erratic flight by his wing-beats, the ruffed grouse bursts into view, in full flight with the first strokes of his thundering pinions, and you have a brief vision of untamed nature as it was in the old days. On either side of the vanis.h.i.+ng brown nebula the ancient mossed and lichened trunks rear themselves again, above it their lofty ramage veils the sky, beneath it lie the deep, noiseless cus.h.i.+on of moss, the shrubs and plants that the old wood rangers knew and the moose browsed on, and the tangled trunks of fallen trees. You almost fancy that you hear the long-ago silenced voices of the woods, so vividly does this wild spirit for an instant conjure up a vision of the old wild world whereof he is a survival.

Acquaintance with civilized man has not tamed him, but has made him the wilder. He deigns to feed upon apple-tree buds and buckwheat and woodside clover, not as a gift, but a begrudged compensation for what you have taken from him, and gives you therefor not even the thanks of familiarity; and notwithstanding his acquaintance with generations of your race he will not suffer you to come so near to him as he would your grandfather.

If, when the leaves are falling, you find him in your barnyard, garden, or out-house, or on the porch, do not think he has any intention of a.s.sociating with you or your plebeian poultry. You can only wonder where he found refuge from the painted shower when all his world was wooded.

If he invites your attendance at his drum solo, it is only to fool you with the sight of an empty stage, for you must be as stealthy and keen-eyed as a lynx to see his proud display of distended ruff and wide spread of barred tail and accelerated beat of wings that mimic thunder, or see even the leafy curtain of his stage flutter in the wind of his swift exit.

How the definite recognition of his motionless form evades you, so perfectly are his colors merged into those of his environment, whether it be in the flush greenness of summer, the painted hues of autumn or its later faded dun and gray, or in the whiteness of winter. Among one or the other he is but a clot of dead leaves, a knot upon a branch, the gray stump of a sapling protruding from the snow, or, covered deep in the unmarked whiteness, he bursts from it like a mine exploded at your feet, leaving you agape till he has vanished from your sight and your ears have caught the last flick of his wings against the dry branches.

In May, his mate sits on her nest, indistinguishable among the brown leaves and gray branches about her. Later, when surprised with her brood, how conspicuous she makes herself, fluttering and staggering along the ground, while her callow chicks, old in cunning though so lately their eyes first beheld the world, scatter in every direction like a shattered globule of quicksilver and magically disappear where there is no apparent hiding-place. Did they con the first lesson of safety in the dark chamber of the egg, or absorb it with the warmth of the brooding breast that gave them life?

Listen, and out of the silence which follows the noisy dispersion of the family hear the low sibilant voice of the mother calling her children to her or cautioning them to continued hiding. Perhaps you may see her, alertly skulking among the underbrush, still uttering that tender, persuasive cry, so faint that the chirp of a cricket might overbear it.

Scatter her brood when the members are half grown and almost as strong of wing as herself, and you presently hear her softly calling them and a.s.suring them of her continued care.

Among many things that mark the changing season, is the dispersion of this wildwood family. Each member is now s.h.i.+fting for itself in matters of seeking food, safety, pleasure, and comfort. You will come upon one in the ferny undergrowth of the lowland woods where he is consorting with woodc.o.c.k, frighten another from his feast on the fence-side elderberries, scare one in the thick shadows of the evergreens, another on the spa.r.s.ely wooded steep of a rocky hillside, and later hear the drum-beat of a young c.o.c.k that the soft Indian summer has fooled into springtime love-making, and each has the alertness that complete self-dependence has enforced.

Still, you may come upon them gathered in social groups, yet each going his own way when flushed. Upon rare occasions you may surprise a grand convention of all the grouse of the region congregated on the sunny lee of a hillside. It is a sight and sound to remember long, though for the moment you forget the gun in your hands, when by ones, twos, and dozens the dusky forms burst away up wind, down wind, across wind, signalling their departure with volleys of intermittent and continuous thunder. Not many times in your life will you see this, yet, if but once, you will be thankful that you have not outlived all the old world's wildness.

x.x.xIX

TWO SHOTS

A boy of fourteen, alert, but too full of life to move slowly and cautiously, is walking along an old road in the woods, a road that winds here and there with meanderings that now seem vagrant and purposeless but once led to the various piles of cordwood and logs for whose harvesting it was hewn. Goodly trees have since grown up from saplings that the judicious axe then scorned. Beeches, whose flat branches are shelves of old gold; poplars, turned to towers of brighter metal by the same alchemy of autumn; and hemlocks, pyramids of unchanging green, shadow the leaf-strewn forest floor and its inconspicuous dotting of gray and russet stumps. How happy the boy is in the freedom of the woods; proud to carry his first own gun, as he treads gingerly but somewhat noisily over the fallen leaves and dry twigs, scanning with quick glances the thickets, imagining himself the last Mohican on the warpath, or Leather-Stocking scouting in the primeval wilderness.

Under his breath he tells the confiding chickadees and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs what undreamed-of danger they would be in from such a brave, were he not in pursuit of n.o.bler game. Then he hears a sudden rustle of the dry leaves, the _quit! quit!_ of a partridge, catches a glimpse of a rapidly running brown object, which on the instant is launched into a flas.h.i.+ng thunderous flight. Impelled by the instinct of the born sportsman, he throws the gun to his shoulder, and scarcely with aim, but in the direction of the sound, pulls trigger and fires.

On the instant he is ashamed of his impulsive haste, which fooled him into wasting a precious charge on the inanimate evergreen twigs and sere leaves that come dropping and floating down to his shot, and is thankful that he is the only witness of his own foolishness.

But what is that? Above the patter and rustle of falling twigs and leaves comes a dull thud, followed by the rapid beat of wings upon the leaf-strewn earth. With heart beating as fast he runs toward the sound, afraid to believe his senses, when he sees a n.o.ble grouse fluttering out feebly his last gasp. He cannot be sure that it is not all a dream that may vanish in a breath, till he has the bird safe in his hand, and then he is faint with joy. Was there ever such a shot? Would that all the world were here to see, for who can believe it just for the telling?

There never will be another such a bird, nor such a shot, for him. He fires a dozen ineffectual ones at fair marks that day, but the glory of that one shot would atone for twice as many misses, and he need not tell of them, only of this, whereof he bears actual proof, though he himself can hardly accept it, till again and again he tests it by admiring look and touch.

Years after the killing of grouse on the wing has become a matter-of-course occurrence in his days of upland shooting, the memory of this stands clearest and best. Sixty years later the old wood road winds through the same scene, by some marvel of kindliness or oversight, untouched by the devastating axe, unchanged but by the forest growth of half a century and its seemly and decorous decay. A thicker screen of undergrowth borders the more faintly traced way. The golden-brown shelves of the beech branches sweep more broadly above it, the spires of the evergreens are nearer the sky, and the yellow towers of the poplars are builded higher, but they are the same trees and beneath them may yet be seen the gray stumps and trunks mouldered to russet lines, of their ancient brethren who fell when these were saplings.

The gray-bearded man who comes along the old wood road wonders at the little change so many years have made in the scene of the grand achievements of his youth, and in his mind he runs over the long calendar to a.s.sure himself that so many autumns have glowed and faded since that happy day. How can he have grown old, his ear dull to the voices of the woods, his sight dim with the slowly but surely falling veil of coming blindness, so that even now the road winds into a misty haze just before him, yet these trees be young and l.u.s.ty?

As they and the unfaded page of memory record the years, it was but a little while ago that his heart was almost bursting with pride of that first triumph. Would that he might once more feel that delicious pang of joy.

Hark! There is the _quit! quit!_ of a grouse, and there another and another, and the patter and rustle of their retreating footsteps, presently launching into sudden flight, vaguely seen in swift bolts of gray, hurtling among gray tree trunks and variegated foliage. True to the old instinct his gun leaps to his shoulder, and he fires again and again at the swift target. But the quick eye no longer guides the aim, the timely finger no longer pulls the trigger, and the useless pellets waste themselves on the leaves and twigs.

The woods are full of grouse, as if all the birds of the region had congregated here to mock his failing sight and skill. On every side they burst away from him like rockets, and his quick but futile charges in rapid succession are poured in their direction, yet not a bird falls, nor even a feather wavers down through the still October air. His dim eyes refuse to mark down the birds that alight nearest; he can only vaguely follow their flight by the whirring rush of wings and the click of intercepting branches.

He is not ashamed of his loss of skill, only grieved to know that his shooting days are over, yet he is glad there is no one near to see his failure. He makes renunciation of all t.i.tle to the name of a crack shot, too well knowing that this is no brief lapse of skill, but the final, inevitable falling off of the quick eye and sure hand. Slowly and sadly he makes his way to where the shaded path merges into the sunny clearing. There, from the cover of the last bush, a laggard bird springs as if thrown from a catapult, describing in his flight an arc of a great circle, and clearly defined against the steel-blue sky.

Again the gun springs instinctively to the shoulder, the instantaneous aim is taken well ahead on the line of flight, the trigger pressed in the nick of time, the charge explodes, and out of a cloud of feathers drifting and whirling in the eddies of his own wing-beats, the n.o.ble bird sweeps downward in the continuation of the course that ends with a dull thud on the pasture sward.

The old sportsman lifts his clean-killed bird without a thrill of exultation--he is only devoutly thankful for the happy circ.u.mstance which made successful the last shot he will ever fire, and that not as a miss he may remember it. Henceforth untouched by him his gun shall hang upon the wall, its last use linked with the pleasant memory of his last shot.

XL

NOVEMBER DAYS

In a midsummer sleep one dreams of winter, its cold, its silence and desolation all surrounding him; then awakes, glad to find himself in the reality of the light and warmth of summer.

Were we dreaming yesterday of woods more gorgeous in their leaf.a.ge than a flower garden in the flush of profusest bloom, so bright with innumerable tints that autumnal blossoms paled beside them as stars at sunrise? Were we dreaming of air soft as in springtime, of the gentle babble of brooks, the carol of bluebirds, the lazy chirp of crickets, and have we suddenly awakened to be confronted by the desolation of naked forests, the more forlorn for the few tattered remnants of gay apparel that flutter in the bleak wind? To hear but the sullen roar of the chill blast and the clash of stripped boughs, the fitful scurry of wind-swept leaves and the raving of swollen streams, swelling and falling as in changing stress of pa.s.sion, and the heavy leaden patter of rain on roof and sodden leaves and earth?

Verily, the swift transition is like a pleasant dream with an unhappy awakening. Yet not all November days are dreary. Now the sun s.h.i.+nes warm from the steel-blue sky, its eager rays devour the rime close on the heels of the retreating shadows, and the north wind sleeps. The voice of the br.i.m.m.i.n.g stream falls to an even, softer cadence, like the murmur of pine forests swept by the light touch of a steady breeze.

Then the wind breathes softly from the south, and there drifts with it from warmer realms, or arises at its touch from the earth about us, or falls from the atmosphere of heaven itself, not smoke, nor haze, but something more ethereal than these: a visible air, balmy with odors of ripeness as the breath of June with perfume of flowers. It pervades earth and sky, which melt together in it, till the bounds of neither are discernible, and blends all objects in the landscape beyond the near foreground, till nothing is distinct but some golden gleam of sunlit water, bright as the orb that s.h.i.+nes upon it. Flocks of migrating geese linger on the stubble fields, and some laggard crows flap lazily athwart the sky or perch contentedly upon the naked treetops as if they cared to seek no clime more genial. The brief heavenly beauteousness of Indian summer has fallen upon the earth, a few tranquil days of ethereal mildness dropped into the sullen or turbulent border of winter.

In November days, as in all others, the woods are beautiful to the lover of nature and to the sportsman who in their love finds the finer flavor of his pastime. Every marking of the gray trunks, each moss-patch and scale of lichen on them, is shown more distinctly now in the intercepted light, and the delicate tracery of the bare branches and their netted shadows on the rumpled carpet of the forest floor, have a beauty as distinctive as the fullness of green or frost-tinted leaf.a.ge and its silhouette of shade.

No blossom is left in woods or fields, save where in the one the witch-hazel unfolds its unseasonable flowers yellow beneath cold skies, or a pink blossom of herb-robert holds out with modest bravery in a sheltered cranny of the rocks; and where in the other, the ghostly bloom of everlasting rustles above the leafless stalks in the wind-swept pastures. There are brighter flashes of color in the sombre woods where the red winter-berries s.h.i.+ne on their leafless stems and the orange and scarlet cl.u.s.ters of the twining bitter-sweet light up the gray trellis of the vagrant climber.

No sense of loss or sadness oppresses the soul of the ardent sportsman as he ranges the unroofed aisles alert for the wary grouse, the skulking woodc.o.c.k, full-grown and strong of wing and keen-eyed for every enemy, or the hare flas.h.i.+ng his half-donned winter coat among the gray underbrush as he bounds away before the merry chiding of the beagles.

The brown monotony of the marshes is pleasant to him as green fields, while the wild duck tarries in the dark pools and the snipe probes the unfrozen patches of ooze. To him all seasons are kind, all days pleasant, wherein he may pursue his sport, though the rain pelt him, chill winds a.s.sail him, or the summer sun shower upon him its most fervent rays, and in these changeful days of November he finds his full measure of content.

XLI

THE MUSKRAT

A little turning of nature from her own courses banishes the beaver from his primal haunts, but his less renowned and lesser cousin, the muskrat, philosophically accommodates himself to the changed conditions of their common foster mother and still clings fondly to her altered breast.

The ancient forests may be swept away and their successors disappear, till there is scarcely left him a watersoaked log to use as an intermediate port in his coastwise voyages; continual shadow may give place to diurnal suns.h.i.+ne, woodland to meadow and pasture, the plough tear the roof of his underground home, and cattle graze where once only the cloven hoofs of the deer and the moose trod the virgin mould, yet he holds his old place.

In the springtides of present years as in those of centuries past his whining call echoes along the changed sh.o.r.es, his wake seams with silver the dark garment of the water, and his comically grim visage confronts you now as it did the Waubanakee bowmen in the old days when the otter and the beaver were his familiars.