The Strength of the Pines

by Edison Marshall

The greatest difference between this wilderness drama and the dramas that human beings see upon a stage is that one was reality and the other is pretense. The players were beasts, not men. The only human being anywhere in the near vicinity was the old trapper, Hudson, following down his trap line on the creek margin on the way to his camp. It is true that two other men, with a rather astounding similarity of purpose, were at present coming down two of the long trails that led to the region; but as yet the drama was hidden from their eyes. One of these two was Bruce, coming from Linda's cabin. One was Dave Turner, approaching from the direction of the Ross estates. Turner was much the nearer. Curiously, both had business with the trapper Hudson.

The action of the play was calm at first. Mostly the forest creatures were still in their afternoon sleep. Brother Bill, the great stag elk, had a bed in the very center of a thick wall of buckbush, and human observers at first could not have explained how his great body, with his vast spread of antlers, had been able to push through. But in reality his antlers aided rather than hindered. Streaming almost straight back they act something like a snow-plow, parting the heavy coverts.

The bull elk is in some ways the master of the forest, and one would wonder why he had gone to such an out-of-the-way place to sleep. Unless he is attacked from ambush, he has little to fear even from the Tawny One, the great cougar, and ordinarily the cougar waits until night to do his hunting. The lynx is just a source of scorn to the great bull, and even the timber wolf—except when he is combined with his relatives in winter—is scarcely to be feared. Yet he had been careful to surround himself with burglar alarms,—in other words, to go into the deep thicket that no beast of prey could penetrate without warning him—by the sound of breaking brush—of its approach. It would indicate that there was at least one living creature in this region—a place where men ordinarily did not come—that the bull elk feared.

The does and their little spotted fawns were sleeping too; the blacktail deer had not yet sought the feeding grounds on the ridges. The cougar yawned in his lair, the wolf dozed in his covert, even the poison-people lay like long shadows on the hot rocks. But these latter couldn't be relied upon to sleep soundly. One of the many things they can do is to jump straight out of a dream like a flicking whiplash, coil and hit a mark that many a good pistol shot would miss.

Yet there was no chance of the buzzards, at present spectators in the clouds and waiting for the final act, to become bored. Particularly the lesser animals of the forest—the Little People—were busy at their occupations. A little brown-coated pine marten—who is really nothing but an overgrown weasel famous for his particularly handsome coat—went stealing through the branches of a pine as if he had rather questionable business. Some one had told him, and he couldn't remember who, that a magpie had her nest in that same tree, and Red Eye was going to look and see. Of course he merely wanted to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps he would try to arrange to get a little sip of the mother's blood, just as it passed through the big vein of the throat,—but of course that was only incidental. He felt some curiosity about the magpie's eggs too, the last brood of the year. It might be that there were some little magpies all coiled up inside of them, that would be worth investigation by one of his scientific turn of mind. Perhaps even the male bird, coming frantically to look for his wife, might fly straight into the nest without noticing his brown body curled about the limb. It offered all kinds of pleasing prospects, this hunt through the branches.

Of course it is doubtful if the buzzards could detect his serpent-like form; yet it is a brave man who will say what a buzzard can and cannot see. Anything that can remain in the air as they do, seemingly without the flutter of a wing, has powers not to speak of lightly. But if they could have seen him they would have been particularly interested. A marten isn't a glutton in his feeding, and often is content with just a sip of blood from the throat. That leaves something warm and still for the buzzard's beak.

A long, spotted gopher snake slipped through the dead grass on the ground beneath. He didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular. He was just moseying—if there is such a word—along. Not a blade of grass rustled. Of course there was a chipmunk, sitting at the door of his house in the uplifted roots of a tree; but the snake—although he was approaching in his general direction—didn't seem at all interested in him. Were it not for two things, the serpent would have seemed to be utterly bored and indifferent to life in general. One of these things was its cold, glittering, reptile eyes. The other was its darting, forked tongue.

It may be, after all, that this little tongue was of really great importance in the serpent's hunting. Many naturalists think that quite often the little, rattle-brained birds and rodents that it hunts are so interested in this darting tongue that they quite fail to see the slow approach of the mottled body of the snake behind it. At least it was perfectly evident that the chipmunk did not see Limber-spine at present. Otherwise he wouldn't have been enjoying the scenery with quite the same complacency. If all went well, there might be a considerable lump in the snake's throat yet this afternoon. But it would be a quite different kind of lump from the one the chipmunk's little mate, waiting in vain for her lord to come to supper, would have in her throat.

An old raccoon wakened from his place on a high limb, stretched himself, scratched at his fur, then began to steal down the limb. He had a long way to go before dark. Hunting was getting poor in this part of the woods. He believed he would wander down toward Hudson's camp and look for crayfish in the water. A coyote is usually listed among the larger forest creatures, but early though the hour was—early, that is, for hunters to be out—he was stalking a fawn in a covert. The coyote has not an especially high place among the forest creatures, and he has to do his hunting early and late and any time that offers. Most of the larger creatures pick on him, all the time detesting him for his cunning. The timber wolf, a rather close relation whom he cordially hates, is apt to take bites out of him if he meets him on the trail. The old bull elk would like nothing better than to cut his hide into rag patches with the sharp-edged front hoofs. Even the magpies in the tree tops made up ribald verses about him. But nevertheless the spotted fawn had cause to fear him. The coyote is an infamous coward; but even the little cotton tail rabbit does not have to fear a fawn.

All these hunts were progressing famously when there came a curious interruption. It was just a sound at first. And strangely, not one of the forest creatures that heard it had ears sharp enough to tell exactly from what direction it had come. And that made it all the more unpleasant to listen to.