Forest Neighbors Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Wherever they went they were always struggling and fighting._"]

One dark, stormy night the two deer were stumbling and floundering over roots and bushes, trying to find their way down to the beach for a drink. Both of them were pretty well used up; and one was so weak that he could hardly stand, and could only walk by leaning heavily on the head and antlers of the other, who supported him because he was obliged to, and not out of friendliness. They were within a few rods of the beach when he whose strength was least stepped into a hole and fell, and his leg-bone snapped like a dry twig. He struggled and tried to rise; but his story was told, and before morning he was dead. For once our Buck's instinct of self-preservation had carried him too far. He had taken all the food for himself, and had starved his enemy; and now he was bound face to face to a corpse.

Well, we won't talk about that. He stayed there twenty-four hours, and there would soon have been two dead bucks instead of one if something had not happened which he did not in the least expect--something which seemed like a blessed miracle, yet which was really the simplest and most natural thing in the world. A buck has no fixed time for the casting of his antlers. It usually occurs during the first half of the winter, but it has been known to take place as early as November and as late as April. The second night pa.s.sed, and as it began to grow light again our friend lifted himself on his knees and his hind-legs, and wrestled mightily with his horrible bed-fellow; and suddenly his left antler came loose from his head. The right one was still fast, but it was easily disengaged from the tangle of branching horns, and in a moment he stood erect. The blood was running down his face from the pedicel where the antler had stood, and he was so weak and dizzy that his legs could hardly carry him, and so thin and wasted that he seemed the mere shadow of his former self. But he was free, and that long, horrible dream was over at last.

He tried to walk toward the lake, but fell before he had taken half-a-dozen steps; and for an hour he lay still and rested. It was like a taste of heaven, just to be able to hold his neck straight. The sun had risen by the time he was ready to try it again, and through the trees he saw the s.h.i.+mmer and sparkle of the Glimmergla.s.s. He heard the wind talking to itself in the branches overhead, and the splas.h.i.+ng of the ripples on the beach; and he staggered down to the margin and drank long and deep.

That December was a mild one. The first light snow had already come and gone, and the next two weeks were bright and suns.h.i.+ny. The Buck ate as he had never eaten before, and it was astonis.h.i.+ng to see how rapidly he picked up, and how much he gained before Christmas. His good luck seemed to follow him month after month, for the winter was comparatively open, the snow was not as deep as usual, and the spring came early. By that time the ill effects of his terrible experience had almost entirely disappeared, and he was in nearly as good condition as is usual with the deer at that season of the year--which, of course, isn't really saying very much.

Again, Nature's table was spread with good things, and again he set to work to build a pair of antlers--a pair that should be larger and handsomer than any that had gone before. But as the summer lengthened it became evident that there was something wrong with those antlers, or at least with one of them. One seemed to be quite perfect. It was considerably longer than those of last year, its curve was just right, and it had five tines, which was the correct number and all that he could have asked. But the other, the left, was nothing but a straight, pointed spike, perhaps eight inches in length, shaped almost exactly like those of his first pair. The Buck never knew the reason for this deformity, and I'm not at all certain about it myself, though I have a theory. One stormy day in the early summer, a falling branch, torn from a tree-top by the wind, had struck squarely on that growing antler, then only a few inches long. It hurt him so that for a moment he was fairly blind and dizzy, and it is quite possible that the soft, half-formed bone was so injured that it could never reach its full development.

Anyhow, it made him a rather queer-looking buck, with one perfect antler and one spike. But in everything else--except his spread hoof--he was without spot or blemish. He had well fulfilled the promise of his youth, and he was big and strong and beautiful. Something he had lost, no doubt, of the grace and daintiness of his baby days; but he had also gained much--gained in stateliness and dignity, as well as in size and weight and strength. And even that spike antler was not without its advantages, as he learned a little later.

As the autumn came round he was just as excitable and pa.s.sionate, just as ready for fighting or love-making, as ever, and not one whit subdued by the disaster of the year before. And so one day he had another battle with another buck, while another doe--or perhaps the same one--made off through the trees and left a fragrant trail behind her. He and his adversary went at each other in the usual way, and for some time it seemed unlikely that either of them could ever do anything more than tire the other out by hard pus.h.i.+ng. There was little danger that their antlers would get locked this time, with one pair so badly mismated; and it bade fair to be a very ordinary, every-day sort of a fight. But by and by our Buck saw his opportunity. The enemy exposed his left side, in an unguarded moment, and before he could recover himself that deformed antler had dealt him a terrible thrust. If the force of the blow had been divided among five tines it would probably have had but little effect, but the single straight spike was as good as a sword or a bayonet, and it won the day. The deer with the perfect antlers was not only vanquished, but killed; and the victor was off on the trail of the doe.

And so our friend became the champion of the Glimmergla.s.s, and in all the woods there was not a buck that could stand against him.

But his brother deer were not his only enemies. With the opening of the hunting season those farmers from lower Michigan came again, and day after day they beat the woods in search of game. This time, however, the Buck did not leave, or at least he did not go very far. For the last month he had been fighting everyone who would fight back, and perhaps his many easy victories had made him reckless. At any rate he was bolder than usual, and all through the season he stayed within a few miles of the Glimmergla.s.s.

The farmers had decidedly poor luck, and after hunting for two or three weeks without a single taste of venison they began to feel desperate.

Finally, they secured the help of a trapper who owned a big English foxhound. Hunting with dogs was against the law, and at home they claimed to be very law-abiding citizens, but they had to have a deer, no matter what happened.

The morning after the hound's arrival he got onto the trail of a doe and followed it for hours, until, as a last resort, she made for the Glimmergla.s.s, jumped into the water, and started to swim across to the farther sh.o.r.e. The dog's work was done, and he stood on the bank and watched her go. For a few minutes she thought that she was out of danger, and that the friendly Glimmergla.s.s had saved her; but presently she heard a sound of oars, and turning half-way round she lifted her head and shoulders out of the water, and saw a row-boat and three men bearing down upon her. A look of horror came into her face as she sank back, and her heart almost broke with despair; but she was game, and she struck out with all her might. Her legs tore the water frantically, the straining muscles stood out like ropes on her sides and flanks and shoulders, and she almost threw herself from the water. But it was no use, the row-boat was gaining.

The farmers fired at her again and again, but they were too wildly excited to hit anything until finally the trapper pulled up alongside her and threw a noose over her head. And then, while she lay on her side in the water, with the rope around her neck, kicking and struggling in a blind agony of despair, one of the farmers shot her dead at a range of something less than ten feet. When he went home he bragged that he was the only one of the party who had killed a deer, but he never told just how the thing was done.

That is the kind of fate that you are very likely to meet if you are a deer. But vengeance came on the morrow, for that day it was the Buck's turn to be chased by that horrible fog-horn on four legs. Hour after hour he heard the hound's dreadful baying behind him as he raced through the woods, and at last he, too, started for the water, just as the doe had done. But he never reached it, or at least not on that trip. He was within a few rods of the beach when his spread hoof caught on a root and threw him, and the hound was so close behind that they both went down in a heap. They sprang to their feet at the same instant, and stood for a second glaring at each other. The dog had not meant to fight, only to drive the other into the water, where the hunters would take care of him; but he was game, and he made a spring at the deer's throat. The Buck drew back his forefoot, with its sharp, pointed hoof, and met the enemy with a thrust like that of a Roman soldier's short-sword; and the hound went down with his shoulder broken and a great gash in his side.

And then, with a sudden twist and turn of his head, the Buck caught him on the point of that terrible spike antler, ripped his body open, and tossed him in the air.

The worst enemy was disposed of. But that wasn't all. The man who killed the doe was waiting on the beach and had heard the scuffle, and now he came creeping quietly through the bushes to see what was going on. The Buck was still trampling the body of the dog, and noticed nothing till a rifle bullet grazed his right flank, inflicting just enough of a wound to make him still more furious. He faced around and stood for a moment staring at this new enemy; and then he did something which very few wild deer have ever done. Probably he would not have done it himself if he had not been half crazy with rage and excitement, and much emboldened by his easy victory over the hound. He put his head down and his antlers forward, and charged on a man!

The farmer was jerking frantically at the lever of his repeating rifle, but a cartridge had stuck in the magazine, and he couldn't make it work.

The hound's fate had shown him what that spike antler could do; and when he saw it bearing down on him at full tilt he dropped his gun and ran for his life to his dug-out canoe. He reached it just in time. I almost wish he hadn't.

One more adventure the Buck had that fall. Providence, or Fate, or someone took a hand in affairs, and rid the Glimmergla.s.s of all hunters, not for that season alone, but for many years to come. One night, down beside a spring in the cedar swamp, the Buck found a half-decayed log on which a bag of salt had been emptied. He stayed there for an hour or two, alternately licking the salt and drinking the cold water, and it was as good as an ice-cream soda. The next night he returned for another debauch; but in the meantime two other visitors had been there, and both had seen his tracks and knew that he would come again. As he neared the spring, treading noiselessly on the soft moss, he heard two little clicks, and stopped short to see what they meant. Both were quick and sharp, and both had come at exactly the same instant; yet they were not quite alike, for one had come from the shutter of a camera, and one from the lock of a rifle. Across the salt-lick a photographer and a hunter were facing each other in the darkness, and each saw the gleam of the other's eyes and took him for a deer. So close together were the two clicks that neither man heard the sound of the other's weapon, and both were ready to fire--each in his own way.

The Buck stood and watched, and suddenly there came two bursts of flame--one of them so big and bright that it lit the woods like sheet-lightning. Two triggers had been touched at the same instant, and each did its work well. The flash-light printed on the sensitive plate a picture of a hunter in the act of firing, and the rifle sent a bullet straight through the photographer's forehead. The Buck saw it all as in a dream--the white flame of the magnesium powder; the rifle, belching out its fire and smoke; the camera, silent and harmless, but working just as surely; the two men, each straining his eyes for a sight of his game; the water gleaming in the fierce light, and the dark ranks of the cedars all around. And then, in the tenth of a second, it was all over, and the Buck was b.u.mping against trees, and stumbling and floundering over roots, in his dazed haste to get away from this terrifying mystery.

He heard one horrified shout from the hunter, but nothing from the photographer--and the woods were silent again.

That was the end of the hunting season at the Glimmergla.s.s. With the hunter's trial for manslaughter, we and the Buck are not concerned; and there is nothing more to tell except that the next year the owners of the lands around the lake gave warning that all trespa.s.sers would be prosecuted. They wanted no more such tragedies on their property.

And so the Buck and his sweethearts and his rivals lived in peace, except that the rivals still quarrelled among themselves, as Nature meant them to. The Buck had reached his prime, but you are not to suppose that he began to age immediately afterward. It was long before his eye was dimmed or his natural force abated; and as the years went by, with their summers of lily-pads and tender young browse, and their autumns of beechnuts and fighting and love-making, the broad cloven track of his split foot was often to be found in the hard, smooth sand of the beach. Perhaps it is there now. I wish I could go and see.

THE END