Everything seemed, in some small way, to sense the mystery that went with the swimming sturgeon. They were part of the abundance of this wealthy land, and when they were through spawning, that abundance would be increased. The very presence of the fish was within itself a promise that more were to follow.
Finally there were only half a dozen sturgeon left.
One was a very strong female whose spawn-swollen body even now contained the egg, the cell, that was to be the great White Sturgeon. Swimming close beside her was an equally vigorous male. All the sturgeon that had been able to come this far were among the finest and best.
They stopped in a quiet pool which, within itself, was almost a little lake. A third of a mile wide by a mile and a half long, the pool rolled smoothly down an almost level course. It was shaded on either side by gloomy pines that marched like soldiers in disordered rank for a very great distance. There were no grunting buffalo here, though an occasional white-tailed deer tripped daintily down to drink from the sweet, unpolluted water.
On either side of the pool was a mat of green sedges and water-lilies, and in them a great horde of ducks were rearing their young. They skittered foolishly over the water, seeming to pay no attention to anything save the sheer joy of being alive. Now and then the water beneath them would dimple and ripple in widening circles towards either bank; and when it did, invariably there would be one less duckling. Nothing paid any attention whatever to such casualties. Life teemed in the pool, and there life also fed on life. It was meant to be, and the mighty pike that lived in the pool had to eat, too.
Weary, but far from exhausted, the female carrying the White Sturgeon-to-be pushed herself into the sedges and lay quietly while she rid herself of the burden that she had carried so far. A million or more eggs she left there, and almost before she was finished two little pike that made their home in the sedges had started gobbling them up.
The female sturgeon paid absolutely no attention, and neither did her mate, when he came to fertilize the eggs. They were here to do, and knew how to do, only one thing. Finished, they had no thought as to what might happen next. The two sturgeon swam back into the pool and rested before beginning their long return journey to the great lake. But they had chosen wisely and well.
Almost before the parent fish left, a mink that had long had his eye on the small pike swam quietly down to take one while it was feeding. The other one fled. Though other things came to eat them, in due time what remained of the spawn hatched. The White Sturgeon was the first to appear.
The baby fish came of strong parents, so that there were almost no infertile eggs, but such inroads had already been made among them that not one in twenty ever knew life. Immediately they were singled out by hungry enemies.
The White Sturgeon should have died first for, though all his brothers and sisters were almost the color of the water in which they found birth, he was distinctly different. He was lighter—perhaps a throwback to some distant age when all sturgeon were white—and thus he was the easiest to see. But he seemed to have been born with compensating factors.