The Way of the Wild

by F. St. Mars

He was helping the farmer to clear an oat-stubble of charlock-seeds at the moment, and bending down. That is to say, he was doing inestimable good, for which he got no credit. The next moment, and the next, and for many more, he was still bending down. In fact, from the instant he got sight of that head, it was as if a Hand had come down and turned him by magic into a big model of a bird cast in bronze. All life in him appeared to have dried up and fled. He looked as if you could have picked him up and put him upon a bracket in your drawing-room without his ever moving again. But that was only because of the head he had seen—and its reputation. Moreover, the head was not alone. At least, it had multiplied itself half-a-dozen times in less than half-a-dozen seconds, and even a stoat, which the head belonged to, cannot be in two places at once—though for sheer quickness of movement it, and far more its cousin the weasel, comes very near to it.

Just at this moment it seemed that about the roost unhealthful thing he could do would be to be seen in the air. Wherefore did this innocent and guileless old bird affect not to see the stoats, but made out that he was feeding his way along, quite and absolutely intent upon that yellow devil of a weed whose other name is charlock. He did not even hurry, and each deliberate step was taken with almost a proud daintiness. The only thing was, he never lifted his head; he was almost too obviously unwary—for him. And he gave the impression that every step would be his last out into the field; that he was always going to turn back next instant or the next, as he had done before when the stoats were not there.

On and on he kept till he had crossed the field, going faster and faster, till he ended at the far hedge with a run. And there, so far as he was concerned, was an end of the stoats. He put them aside. He forgot all about them.

They, however, had not forgotten about him.

It was half-an-hour later, and he was patiently gleaning such food as the rooks and the sparrows and the larks had left behind them, when something, he could not tell what, caused him to straighten up, with that beautiful, proud bearing that seems part of the pheasant's heritage from the gorgeous East.

And he was only just in time.

The stoat that had come up behind him, unseen, turned on its heels as it charged, changing its mind at the last moment, as if it saw he saw, and was gone again before you could click a finger, diving superbly back into long grass.

They were following him, then, those little hounds of death; tracking him; running him down. And why? He did not know, perhaps, yet—maybe he did. Blood is a dangerous thing to have on you in the wild—a flaming signal of distress for eye and nose to detect—and they are not often rescuers who hurry to the scene. He had blood on his back, that cock-pheasant, and just every now and then a single bright drop fell by the way. The .22-bore bullet had only grazed him. 'Twas nothing—but it bled more than you would expect. And that explained it. The tracking stoats thought he was wounded.

But even then the old cock-pheasant would not rise.

The firing in the covert had risen suddenly to a fierce crescendo, breaking out afresh from another quarter. Here, however, was silence—the absolute, deadly silence in which all the weasel tribe hunt. But they were there, though he could not see them. He knew that, invisible even in the sunlight—they were closing in, tracking him fast, those stoats.