THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK
I DON'T know that he was a record-breaker, but he was certainly much larger and more powerful than the average buck, and he was decidedly good-looking, even for a deer. There were one or two slight blemishes—to be described later—in his physical make-up; but they were not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome and well-formed. I can't give you the whole story of his life, for that would take several books, but I shall try to tell you how he became the biggest buck and the best fighter of his day and generation in the woods around the Glimmerglass. He was unusually favored by Providence, for besides being so large and strong he was given a weapon such as very few full-grown Michigan bucks have ever possessed.
He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder that he distanced all his relations. In the first place, he arrived in the woods a little earlier in the year than deer babies usually do. This was important, for it lengthened his first summer, and gave more opportunity for growth before the return of cold weather. If the winter had lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms, his early advent might have been anything but a blessing; but the spring proved a mild one, and there was plenty of good growing weather for fawns. Then, too, his mother as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he was her only child. If there had been twins, as there were the year before, he would, of course, have had to share her milk with a brother or sister; but as it was he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural monopoly, and he grew and prospered accordingly, and was a baby to be proud of.
"He was a baby to be proud of."
And his mother took good care of him, and never tried to show him off before the other people of the woods. She knew that it was far safer and wiser to keep him concealed as long as possible, and not let anyone know that she had him. So instead of letting him wander with her through the woods when she went in search of food, she generally left him hidden in a thicket or behind a bush or a fallen tree. There he spent many a long, lonely hour, idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows, and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby thoughts, or looking at nothing and thinking of nothing, but just sleeping the quiet sleep of infancy, and living, and growing, and getting ready for hard times.
At first the Fawn knew no difference between friends and enemies, but the instinct of the hunted soon awoke and told him when to be afraid. If a hostile animal came by while the doe was gone, he would crouch low, with his nose to the ground and his big ears laid back on his neck; or if pressed too closely he would jump up and hurry away to some better cover, with leaps and bounds so light and airy that they seemed the very music of motion. But that did not happen very often. His hiding-places were well chosen, and he usually lay still till his mother came back.
When she thought he was large enough, and strong and swift enough, she let him travel with her; and then he became acquainted with several new kinds of forest—with the dark hemlock groves, and the dense cedar swamps; with the open tamarack, where the trees stand wide apart, and between them the great purple-and-white lady's-slippers bloom; with the cranberry marshes, where pitcher-plants live, and white-plumed grasses nod in the breeze; with sandy ridges where the pine-trees purr with pleasure when the wind strokes them; with the broad, beautiful Glimmerglass, laughing and shimmering in the sunshine, and with all the sights and the sounds of that wonderful world where he was to spend the years of his deerhood.
They were a very silent pair. When his breakfast was ready she would sometimes call him with a low murmuring, and he would answer her with a little bleat; but those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around their feet. Yet they understood each other perfectly, and they were very happy together. There was little need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong day was to wander about while the doe picked up her food, and then, when she had eaten her fill, to lie down in some sheltered place, and there rest and chew the cud till it was time to move again.
Life wasn't all sunshine, of course. There were plenty of hard things for the baby Buck to put up with, and perhaps the worst were the mosquitoes and the black-flies and "no-see-'ems" that swarmed in the woods and swamps through the month of June. They got into his mouth and into his nose; they gathered in circles around his eyes; and they snuggled cosily down between the short hairs of his pretty, spotted coat, and sucked the blood out of him till it seemed as if he would soon go dry. For a while they were almost unbearable, but I suppose the woods-people get somewhat hardened to them. Otherwise I should think our friends would have been driven mad, for there was never any respite from their attacks, except possibly a very stormy day, or a bath in the lake, or a saunter on the shore.
At the eastern end of the Glimmerglass there is a broad strip of sand beach, where, if there happens to be a breeze from the water, one can walk and be quite free from the flies; though in calm weather, or with an offshore wind, it is not much better than the woods. There, during fly-time, the doe and her baby were often to be found; and to see him promenading up and down the hard sand, with his mother looking on, was one of the prettiest sights in all the wilderness. The ground-color of his coat was a bright bay red, somewhat like that of his mother's summer clothing; but deeper and richer and handsomer, and with pure white spots arranged in irregular rows all along his neck and back and sides. He was so sleek and polished that he fairly glistened in the sunshine, like a well-groomed horse; his great dark eyes were brighter than a girl's at her first ball; and his ears were almost as big as a mule's, and a million times as pretty. But best and most beautiful of all was the marvellous life and grace and spirit of his every pose and motion. When he walked, his head and neck were thrust forward and drawn back again at every step with the daintiest gesture imaginable; and his tiny pointed hoofs touched the ground so lightly, and were away again so quickly, that you hardly knew what they had done. If anything startled him, he stamped with his forefoot on the hard sand, and tossed his head in the air with an expression that was not fear, but alertness, and even defiance. And when he leaped and ran—but there's no use in trying to describe that.
By the middle of July most of the flies were gone, and the deer could travel where they pleased without being eaten alive. And then, almost before they knew what had happened, the summer was gone, too, and the autumn had come. The Fawn's white spots disappeared, and both he and his mother put off their thin red summer clothing and donned the blue coat of fall, which would by and by fade into the gray of winter—a garment made of longer, coarser hairs, which were so thick that they had to stand on end because there wasn't room for them to lie down, and which made such a warm covering that one who wore it could sleep all night in the snow, and rise in the morning dry and comfortable.
The Fawn had thriven wonderfully. Already the budding antlers were pushing through the skin on the top of his head, which alone is pretty good proof that he was a remarkable baby. But, of course, the infancy of a wild animal is always much shorter than that of a human child. It is well that this is so, for if the period of weakness and helplessness was not shortened for them, there would probably be very few who would ever survive its dangers and reach maturity. The Fawn was weaned early in the autumn; though he still ran with his mother, and she showed him what herbs and leaves were pleasantest to the taste and best for building up bone and muscle, and where the beechnuts were most plentiful. The mast was good that fall, which isn't always the case, and that was another lucky star in young Buck's horoscope. So much depends on having plenty to eat the first year.
And now the doe was thriving as well as her son. Through the summer she had been thin and poor, for the Fawn had fed on her life and strength, and the best of all that came to her she had given to him; but the strain was over at last, and there were granted her a few weeks in which to prepare for the season of cold and storm and scanty food. She made the best of them, and in an amazingly short time she was rolling fat.
Everything was lovely and the goose hung high, when all of a sudden the peace and quiet of their every-day lives were rudely broken. The hunting season had come, and half-a-dozen farmers from lower Michigan had camped beside the Glimmerglass. They were not really very formidable. If one wants to kill deer, one should learn to shoot straight and to get around in the woods without making quite as much noise as a locomotive. But their racket was intolerable, and after a day or two the doe and the Fawn left home and spent the next three or four weeks near a secluded little pond several miles away to the southeast.
By the first of December these troublous times were over, and they had returned to their old haunts in the beech and maple woods, where they picked up a rather scanty living by scraping the light snow away with their forefeet in search of the savory nuts. But before Christmas there came a storm which covered the ground so deeply that they could no longer dig out enough food to keep them from going hungry; and they were forced to leave the high lands and make their way to the evergreen swamps around the head-waters of the Tahquamenon. There they lived on twigs of balsam and hemlock and spruce, with now and then a mouthful of moss or a nutritious lichen. Little by little the fat on their ribs disappeared, they grew lank and lean again, and the bones showed more and more plainly through their heavy winter coats. If one of those November hunters had succeeded in setting his teeth in their flesh he would have found that it had a very pleasant, nutty flavor, but in February it would have tasted decidedly of hemlock. Yet they were strong and healthy, in spite of their boniness, and of course you can't expect to be very fat in winter.
There were worse things than hunger. One afternoon they were following a big buck down a runway—all three of them minding their own business and behaving in a very orderly and peaceable manner—when a shanty-boy stepped out from behind a big birch just ahead of them, and said, "Aah!" very derisively and insultingly. The wind was blowing from them to him, and they hadn't had the least idea that he was there until they were within three rods of his tree. The buck was so startled that for an instant he simply stood still and stared, which was exactly what the shanty-boy had expected him to do. He had stopped so suddenly that his forefeet were thrust forward into the snow, and he was leaning backward a trifle. His head was up, his eyes were almost popping out of their sockets, and there was such a look of astonishment on his face that the man laughed as he raised his gun and took aim. In a second the deer had wheeled and was in the air, but a bullet broke his back just as he left the ground, and he came tumbling down again in a shapeless heap. His spinal cord was cut, and half his body was dead; but he would not give up even then, and he half rose on his forefeet and tried to drag himself away. The shanty-boy stepped to his side with a knife in his hand, the deer gave one loud bleat of fear and pain, and then it was all over.
But by that time the doe and the Fawn were far down the runway—out of sight, and out of danger. Next day they passed that way again, and saw a Canada lynx standing where the buck had fallen, licking his chops as if he had just finished a good meal. It is hard work carrying a deer through the woods, and the shanty-boy had lightened his load as much as possible. Lynxes are not nice. The mother and son pulled their freight as fast as they could travel.
When the world turned green again they went back to the Glimmerglass, but they had not been there long before the young Buck had his nose put out of joint by the arrival of two new babies. Thenceforth his mother had all she could do to take care of them, without paying any further attention to him. The days of his fawnhood were over, and it was time for him to strike out into the world and make his own living.
However, I don't think he was very lonesome. There were plenty of other deer in the woods, and though he did not associate with any of them as he had with his mother, yet he may have enjoyed meeting them occasionally in his travels. And there was ever so much to do and to think about. Eating took up a good deal of time, for he was very active and was still growing, and his strong young body was constantly calling for more food. And it wasn't enough merely to find the food and swallow it, for no sooner was his stomach full than he had to lie down and chew the cud for an hour or so. And, of course, the black-flies and mosquitoes and "no-see-'ems" helped to make things interesting, just as they had the year before. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to be lonely in the woods during fly-time. He changed his clothes, too, and put on a much handsomer dress, though I doubt if he took as much interest in that operation as most of us would. The change contributed greatly to his comfort, for his light summer garment was much better adapted to warm weather than his winter coat, but it did not require any conscious effort on his part. On hot days he sometimes waded out into the lake in search of lily-pads, and the touch of the cool water was very grateful. Occasionally he would take a long swim, and once or twice he paddled clear across the Glimmerglass, from one shore to the other.
And it was during this summer that he raised his first real antlers. Those of the previous autumn had been nothing but two little buds of bone, but these were pointed spikes, several inches in length, standing straight up from the top of his head without a fork or a branch or a curve. They did not add very much to his good looks, and, of course, they dropped off early in the following winter, but they were the forerunners of the beautiful branching antlers of his later years, and if he thought about them at all they were probably as welcome as a boy's first mustache.
Late in the following autumn an event occurred which left its mark on him for the rest of his life. One night he wandered into a part of the woods where some lumbermen had been working during the day. On the ground where they had eaten their lunch he found some baked beans and a piece of dried apple-pie, and he ate them greedily and was glad that he had come. But he found something else, too. One of the road-monkeys had carelessly left his axe in the snow with the edge turned up. The Buck stepped on it, and it slipped in between the two halves of his cloven hoof, and cut deep into his foot. The wound healed in the course of time, but from that night the toes—they were those of his left hind foot—were spread far apart, instead of lying close together as they should have done. Sticks and roots sometimes caught between them in a way that was very annoying, and his track was different from that of any other deer in the woods, which was not a thing to be desired. He was not crippled, however, for he could still leap almost, if not quite, as far as ever, and run almost as fast.
He continued to grow and prosper, and the next summer he raised a pair of forked antlers with two tines each.
And now he is well started down the runway of life, and we must leave him to travel by himself for two or three years. He ranged the woods far and near, and came to know them as a man knows his own house; but no matter what places he visited, the old haunts that his mother had shown him were the best of all, as the deer have learned by the experience of generation after generation. He always came back again to the Glimmerglass, and as the seasons went by I often saw his broad, spreading hoof-print on the sandy beach where they two had so often walked in that first summer. He evidently had plenty of company, and was probably enjoying life, for all around were other foot-prints that were narrow and delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them, of course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but others were those of his friends and acquaintances, and it is quite possible that some of the tiniest and daintiest were made by his children.
That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a summer night, and besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes find there the trails of the waddling porcupines, the broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he goes shambling by, and the handwriting of many another of the woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often be enacted on the smooth, hard sand that lies between the woods and the water, and it is a pity that the show always comes to a sudden close if any would-be spectators appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints of the performers.
With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the other deer that made their homes around the Glimmerglass were driven away for a time. A few stayed, or at least remained as near as they dared; but compared with summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And in his fourth year, in spite of all his efforts to keep out of harm's way, the Buck came very near losing his life at the hands of a man who had really learned how to hunt—not one of the farmers who went ramming about the woods, shooting at everything in sight, and making noise enough to startle even the porcupines.
One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his court-room in Detroit and started for his house. He bought an evening paper as he boarded the street-car; and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that met his eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan: "Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds." The judge folded the paper again and put it in his pocket, and all the rest of the way home he was dreaming of things that he had seen before—of the white and silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the long still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November skies, of a huge buck feeding unconcernedly beneath the beech-trees, of nutty venison steaks broiling on the coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers for his dining-room. Court had adjourned for three days, and that night he took the train for the north. And while he travelled, the snow came down softly and silently, melting at first as fast as it fell, and then, as the cold grew sharper, clothing the woods in a thin, white robe, the first gift of the coming winter.
Next day the Buck was lying behind a fallen tree, chewing his cud, when the breeze brought him a whiff of an unpleasant human odor. He jumped up and hurried away, and the judge heard him crash through the bushes, and searched until he had found his trail. An hour later, as the Buck was nosing for beechnuts in the snow, a rifle cracked and a bullet went zipping by and carried off the very tip of his left antler. He dropped his white flag and was off like a shot.
Chase a wounded deer, and he will run for miles; leave him alone, and if he is badly hurt he will soon lie down. The chances are that he will never get up again. The judge knew that the Buck was hit, for he had seen his tail come down. But was he hit hard? There was no blood on the trail, and the judge decided to follow.
The Buck hurried on, but before long his leaps began to grow shorter. After a mile or so he stopped, looked back, and listened. The woods were very, very still, and for all that he could see or hear there was not the least sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, and in a few minutes he pushed on again, though not as rapidly as before. As the short afternoon wore away he travelled still more slowly, and his stops were longer and more frequent. And at last, just before sunset, as he stood and watched for the enemy who might or might not be on his trail, he heard a twig snap, and saw a dark form slip behind a tree. This time he ran as he had never run before in all his life.
The judge spent the night at the nearest lumber-camp, and the next morning he was out again as soon as he could see, following his own trail back to where he had left that of the Buck. On the way he crossed the tracks of two other deer, but they had no temptations for him. He wanted to solve the mystery of that spreading hoof-print, and to make sure that his shot had not been a clean miss. And now began a day which was without precedent in the Buck's whole history. Those woods are not the best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek with a man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded slopes from which he can look back to see if anyone is following him. Even the glades and the open cranberry swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere there is cover for the still-hunter. And when the ground is carpeted with snow an inch and a half deep, as it was then, and at every step a deer must leave behind him a trail as plain as a turnpike road, then it is not strange if he feels that he has run up against a decidedly tough proposition. Eyes, ears, and nose are all on the alert, and all doing their level best, but what eye can penetrate the cedar swamp beyond a few yards; or what ear can always catch the tread of a moccasin on the moss and the snow before it comes within rifle range; or what nose, no matter how delicate, can detect anything but what happens to lie in its owner's path, or what the wind chooses to bring it? Many a foe had crossed the Buck's trail in the course of his life; but none had ever followed him like this—silently and relentlessly—slowly, but without a moment's pause. A few leaps were always enough to put the judge out of sight, and half an hour's run left him far behind; but in a little while he was there again, creeping cautiously through the undergrowth, and peering this way and that for a glimpse of a plump, round, blue-gray body. Once he fired before the deer knew that he was at hand, and if a hanging twig had not turned the bullet a trifle from its course, the still-hunt would have ended then and there.
But late in the afternoon the Buck thought that he had really shaken his pursuer off, and the judge was beginning to think so, too. They had not seen each other for two or three hours, the day was nearly over, and there were signs of a change in the weather. If the Buck could hold out till nightfall, and then the snow should melt before morning, he would be comparatively safe.
In his fear of the enemy lurking in the rear, he had forgotten all other dangers; and without quite realizing what he was doing he had come back to the Glimmerglass, and was tramping once more up and down the old familiar runways. Presently he came upon a huge maple, lying prostrate on the ground. He walked around its great bushy head and down toward its foot; and there he found a broad, saucer-shaped hollow, left when the tree was torn up by the roots in some wild gale. On one side rose a mass of earth, straight as a stone wall and four or five feet in height; and against its foot lay one of the most tempting beds of dead leaves that he had ever seen, free from snow, dry as a whistle, soft and downy. The sight of it was too much for him. He was very weary, his limbs fairly ached with fatigue, and for the last hour his spread hoof had given him a good deal of pain. His enemy was nowhere in sight, and in spite of his misgivings he sank down on the couch with a sigh of comfort, and began to chew his cud.
The judge was about ready to give up for the night when he, too, came upon that fallen maple. He saw the wall of earth and twisted roots, with the deer-tracks leading toward it; and slowly, softly, silently, he crept down toward the Buck's shelter.
There was no wind that evening, and the woods seemed perfectly still; but now, unnoticed by the judge, a faint, faint puff came wandering among the trees, as if on purpose to warn the deer of his danger. Suddenly he started, sniffed the air, and was up and away like a race-horse—not leaping nor bounding now, but running low, with his head down, and his antlers laid back on his neck. If he had been in the cedar swamp he would have escaped unhurt, but up in the hardwood the trees do not stand so close, and one can see a little farther. The judge fired before he could get out of sight, and he dropped with three ribs broken and a bullet lodged behind his right shoulder. He was up again in an instant, but there were blood-stains on the snow where he had lain, and this time the judge did not follow. Instead of giving chase he went straight back to the lumber-camp, feeling almost as sure of that new pair of antlers as if he had carried them with him.
The Buck ran a little way, with his flag lowered and the blood spurting, and then he lay down to rest, just as the judge knew he would. The bleeding soon stopped, but it left him very weak and tired, and that night was the most miserable he had ever known. The darkness settled down thick and black over the woods, the wind began to blow, and by and by the rain commenced to fall—first a drizzle, and then a steady pour. Cold and wet, wounded and tired and hungry, the Buck was about as wretched as it is possible for a mortal to be. And yet that rain was the one and only thing that could save him. Under its melting touch the snow began to disappear, and before morning the ground was bare again. Even the blood-stains were washed away. It would take a better nose than the judge's to track him now.
Yet the danger was not over, by any means. The judge knew very nearly where to look for him, and could probably find him if he did not get up and move on. And to move on, or even to rise to his feet, seemed utterly impossible. The least motion sent the most exquisite pain shooting through his whole body, and I believe he would have died where he lay, either at the hands of the judge or from exhaustion, if another man hadn't come along. The judge would have advanced slowly and quietly, and the deer might never have known he was coming till a rifle bullet hit him; but this man's errand must have been a different one, for he came striding noisily through the trees and bushes and over the dead leaves, whistling "I Want Yer, Ma Honey," at the top of his whistle. If you are obliged to be out in the woods during the hunting season, and don't care to kill anything, it is always best to make as much noise as you can. There is less danger that some other fool will take you for a deer and shoot you dead. The Buck heard him, of course, and tried to rise, only to sink back with a groan. He couldn't do it, or at least he thought he couldn't. But when the man came around a little balsam only two rods away, then his panic got the better of his pain, and he jumped up and made off at a clumsy, limping run. Every joint seemed on fire, and he ached from the top of his head to the toes of that poor left hind-foot. But after the first plunge it was not quite so bad. The motion took some of the stiffness out of his limbs, and by the time the judge arrived he was a mile away and was thinking about breakfast.
We must do the sportsman the justice of saying that his remorse was very keen when he stepped aboard the train that night, bound for Detroit. He had wounded a deer and had let it get away from him, to suffer, and probably to die a painful, lingering death. The whole day—the last of the hunting season and of his court recess—had been spent in an unavailing search; not merely because he wanted some venison and a pair of antlers to carry home with him, but because he wanted to put the Buck out of his misery. He had failed everywhere, and he felt sorry and ashamed, and wished he had stayed at home. But, as it happened, the Buck did not want to be put out of his misery. Just as the judge took the train he was lying down for the night. He would be stiff when he rose again, but not as stiff as he had been that morning. He would be weak and tired, but he would still be able to travel and find food. He would lose his plumpness and roundness, no doubt, and lose them very rapidly. The winter would probably be a hard one, with such a misfortune as this at its very beginning. But no matter, it would pass. He wasn't the first Buck who had had his ribs smashed by an injection of lead and had lived to tell the tale.
The next year it was his antlers that got him into trouble—his antlers and his quarrelsomeness. Two round, black, velvet-covered knobs had appeared in spring on the top of his head, and had pushed up higher and higher till they formed cylindrical columns, each one leaning outward and a little backward. They were hot as fever with the blood that was rushing through them, building up the living masonry; and at the upper ends, where the work was newest, they were soft and spongy, and very sensitive, so that the least touch was enough to give pain. Longer and longer they grew, and harder and harder; by and by curving forward and inward; and one after another the tines appeared. And at last, in the early autumn, the tall towers of bone were complete, the blood ceased to course through them, and the Buck rubbed them against the tree-trunks until the velvety skin was all worn off, and they were left smooth and brown and polished. They were a handsome pair, spreading and branching very gracefully over his forehead, and bearing four tines to each beam. It is a mistake to suppose, as so many people do, that the number of tines on each antler invariably corresponds to the number of years that its owner has lived; but it very often does, especially before he has passed the prime of life.
No sooner were the antlers finished than the Buck began to grow fat. He had been eating heartily for months, but he hadn't been able to put much flesh on his ribs as long as he had that big, bony growth to feed. Bucks and does are alike in this, that for both of them the summer is a season of plenty, but not of growing plump and round and strong. The difference between them is that the does give their strength and vitality to the children they are nursing, while the bucks pile theirs up on their own foreheads.
"The buck was nearing the prime of life."
And there was another change which came with the autumn. Through the summer he had been quiet and gentle, and had attended very strictly to his own affairs; but now the life and vigor and vitality which for weeks and months had been pouring into that tall, beautiful structure on his forehead were all surging like a tide through his whole body; and he became very passionate and excitable, and spent much time in rushing about the woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own sex, and making love to the does. The year was at its high-water mark, and the Buck was nearing his prime. Food was plenty; everywhere the beechnuts were dropping on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold and brown, and the very taste of the air was enough to make one happy. Was it any wonder if he sometimes felt as if he would like to fight every other buck in Michigan, and all of them at once?
One afternoon in October he fought a battle with another buck who was very nearly his match in size and strength—a battle that came near being the end of both of them. There was a doe just vanishing among the bushes when the fuss began, and the question at issue was which should follow her and which shouldn't. It would be easy enough to find her, for, metaphorically speaking, "her feet had touched the meadows, and left the daisies rosy." Wherever she went, a faint, faint fragrance clung to the dead leaves, far too delicate for a human nose to detect, yet quite strong enough for a buck to follow. But the trail wasn't broad enough for two, and the first thing to be done was to have a scrap and see which was the better and more deserving deer. And, as it turned out, the scent grew cold again, and the doe never heard that eager patter of hoofs hurrying down the runway behind her.
The bucks came together like two battering-rams, with a great clatter and clash of antlers, but after the first shock the fight seemed little more than a pushing-match. Each one was constantly trying to catch the other off his guard and thrust a point into his flesh, but they never succeeded. A pair of widely branching antlers is as useful in warding off blows as in delivering them. Such a perfect shield does it make, when properly handled, that at the end of half an hour neither of the bucks was suffering from anything but fatigue, and the issue was as far as ever from being settled. There was foam on their lips, and sweat on their sides; their mouths were open, and their breath came in gasps; every muscle was working its hardest, pushing and shoving and guarding; and they drove each other backward and forward through the bushes, and ploughed up the ground, and scattered the dry leaves in their struggles; and yet there was not a scratch on either shapely body.
Finally, they backed off and rushed together again with such violence that our Buck's antlers were forced apart just a trifle, and his enemy's slipped in between them. There was a little snap as they sprang back into position, and the mischief was done. The two foes were locked together in an embrace which death itself could not loosen.
The next few weeks were worse than a nightmare. If one went forward, the other had to go backward; and neither could go anywhere or do anything without getting the consent of the other or else carrying him along by main force. Many things could not be done at all—not even when both were willing and anxious to do them. They could not run or leap. They could not see, except out of the corners of their eyes. They would never again toss those beautiful antlers in the air, for they had come together with their heads held low, and in that position they must remain. They could not even lie down without twisting their necks till they ached as if they were breaking. With their noses to the ground, and with anger and misery in their hearts, they pushed and hauled each other this way and that through the woods. And wherever they went, they were always struggling and fighting and striving for every mouthful of food that came within reach. It was little enough that they found at the best, and it would have been better for both of them if they could have agreed to divide it evenly, but of course that would have been asking too much of deer nature. Each took all he could get, and at first they were so evenly matched that each secured somewhere near his fair share. They spied a beechnut on the ground, or a bit of lichen, or a tender twig; and together they made a dive for it. Two noses were thrust forward—no, not forward, sidewise—and two mouths were open to grasp the precious morsel which would enable its possessor to keep up the fight a little longer. Sometimes one got it, and sometimes the other; but from the very beginning our Buck was a shade the stronger, and his superiority grew with every mouthful that he managed to wrest from his fellow-prisoner. Both of them were losing flesh rapidly, but he kept his longer than the other. And at last they reached the point where, by reason of his greater strength, he got everything and the other nothing, and then the end was near. It would have come long before if both had not been in prime condition on the day of the battle.
"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 passed, 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 shimmer and sparkle of the Glimmerglass. He heard the wind talking to itself in the branches overhead, and the splashing 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 sunshiny. The Buck ate as he had never eaten before, and it was astonishing 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 passionate, 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 pushing. 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 Glimmerglass, 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 Glimmerglass.
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 Glimmerglass, jumped into the water, and started to swim across to the farther shore. 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 Glimmerglass 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 Glimmerglass 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 bumping 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 Glimmerglass. 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 trespassers 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
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.