THE BLOOD ATONEMENT
XI
"Men own the day, but the night is ours," is an old saying among the wild folk that inhabit the forests of Trail's End. And the saying has really deep significances that can't be discerned at one hearing. Perhaps human beings—their thoughts busy with other things—can never really get them at all. But the mountain lion—purring a sort of queer, singsong lullaby to her wicked-eyed little cubs in the lair—and the gray wolf, running along the ridges in the mystery of the moon—and those lesser hunters, starting with Tuft-ear the lynx and going all the way down to that terrible, white-toothed cutthroat, Little Death the mink—they know exactly what the saying means, and they know that it is true. The only one of the larger forest creatures that doesn't know is old Ashur, the black bear (Ashur means black in an ancient tongue, just as Brunn means brown, and the common Oregon bear is usually decidedly black) and the fact that he doesn't is curious in itself. In most ways Ashur has more intelligence than all the others put together; but he is also the most indifferent. He is not a hunter; and he doesn't care who owns anything as long as there are plenty of bee trees to mop out with his clumsy paw, and plenty of grubs under the rotten logs.
The saying originated long and long ago when the world was quite young. Before that time, likely enough, the beasts owned both the day and the night, and you can imagine them denying man's superiority just as long as possible. But they came to it in the end, and perhaps now they are beginning to be doubtful whether they still hold dominion over the night hours. You can fancy the forest people whispering the saying back and forth, using it as a password when they meet on the trails, and trying their best to believe it. "Man owns the day but the night is ours," the coyotes whisper between sobs. In a world where men have slowly, steadily conquered all the wild creatures, killed them and driven them away, their one consolation lies in the fact that when the dark comes down their old preëminence returns to them.
Of course the saying is ridiculous if applied to cities or perhaps even to the level, cleared lands of the Middle West. The reason is simply that the wild life is practically gone from these places. Perhaps a lowly skunk steals along a hedge on the way to a chicken pen, but he quivers and skulks with fear, and all the arrogance of hunting is as dead in him as his last year's perfume. And perhaps even the little bobwhites, nestling tail to tail, know that it is wholly possible that the farmer's son has marked their roost and will come and pot them while they sleep. But a few places remain in America where the reign of the wild creatures, during the night hours at least, is still supreme. And Trail's End is one of them.
It doesn't lie in the Middle West. It is just about as far west as one can conveniently go, unless he cares to trace the rivers down to their mouths. Neither was it cleared land, nor had its soil ever been turned by a plow. The few clearings that there were—such as the great five sections of the Rosses—were so far apart that a wolf could run all night (and the night-running of a wolf is something not to speak of lightly) without passing one. There is nothing but forest,—forest that stretches without boundaries, forest to which a great mountain is but a single flower in a meadow, forest to make the brain of a timber cruiser reel and stagger from sheer higher mathematics. Perhaps man owns these timber stretches in the daytime. He can go out and cut down the trees, and when they don't choose to fall over on top of him, return safely to his cabin at night. He can venture forth with his rifle and kill Ashur the black bear and Blacktail the deer, and even old Brother Bill, the grand and exalted ruler of the elk lodge. The sound of his feet disturbs the cathedral silence of the tree aisles, and his oaths—when the treacherous trail gives way beneath his feet—carry far through the coverts. But he behaves somewhat differently at night. He doesn't feel nearly so sure of himself. The sound of a puma screaming a few dozen feet away in the shadows is likely enough to cause an unpleasant twitching of the skin of his back. And he feels considerably better if there are four stout walls about him. At nighttime, the wild creatures come into their own.
Bruce sensed these things as he waited for the day to break. For all the hard exertion of the previous day, he wakened early on the first morning of his return to his father's home. Through the open window he watched the dawn come out. And he fancied how a puma, still hungry, turned to snarl at the spreading light as he crept to his lair.
All over the forest the hunting creatures left their trails and crept into the coverts. Their reign was done until darkness fell again. The night life of the forest was slowly stilled. The daylight creatures—such as the birds—began to waken. Probably they welcomed the sight of day as much as Bruce himself. The man dressed slowly. He wouldn't waken the two women that slept in the next room, he thought. He crept slowly out into the gray dawn.
He made straight for the great pine that stood a short distance from the house. For reasons unknown to him, the pine had come often into his dreams. He had thought that its limbs rubbed together and made words,—but of the words themselves he had hardly caught the meaning. There was some high message in them, however; and the dream had left him with a vague curiosity, an unexplainable desire to see the forest monarch in the daylight.