Wild Folk

by Samuel Scoville

The keen eyes of the blackcat caught sight of the hare’s first bound in spite of his protective coloration, and he at once cut across the diameter of the circle. In spite of this short cut, the hare reached the bank of the open river many yards ahead. Well out in the midst of the rushing icy water lay a sand bar, now covered with snow. To the blackcat’s amazement and disgust, and contrary to every tradition of the chase, this unconventional hare plunged with a desperate bound fully ten feet out into the icy water. Wabasso was no swimmer, and had evidently elected to travel by water in the same way which he had found successful by land. Kicking mightily with his hind legs he hopped his way through the water, raising himself bodily at every kick, only to sink back until but the top of his white nose showed. Nevertheless, in a wonderfully short time he had won his way through the wan water, and lay panting and safe on the sand bank. If pursued, he could take to the water again and hop his way to either shore, along which he could run and take to the water whenever it was necessary.

To-night no such tactics were needed. The fisher, in spite of his name, hates water. He can swim, albeit slowly and clumsily, in the summer time. As for leaping into a raging torrent of ice-cold water—it was not to be considered. The blackcat raced up and down the bank furiously, and not until convinced that the rabbit was on that snow bank for the night, did he give up the hunt and go bounding along the bank of the river after other and easier prey. For the first time that night the mildness of his face was marred by a snarling curl of the lips, showing the full set of cruel fighting teeth with which every weasel, large or small, is equipped.

As the blackcat followed the line of the river, his sharp ear caught a steady and monotonous sound, like someone using a peculiarly dull saw. Around a bend the still water was frozen. Against the side of the bank an empty pork-keg had drifted down from some lumberman’s camp, and frozen into the ice. In front of the shattered keg crouched a large, blackish, hairy animal, gnawing as if paid by the hour. It was none other than the Canada porcupine—“Old Man Quillpig,” as he is called by the lumberjacks, who hate him because he gnaws to sawdust every scrap of wood that has ever touched salt. The porcupine saw the blackcat, but never ceased gnawing. Many and many an animal has thought that he could kill sluggish, stupid Quillpig. The wolf, the lynx, the panther, and the wildcat all have tried—and died. So to-night the porcupine kept on with his gnawing, under the star-shine, convinced that no animal that lived could solve his defense.

THE SAFE RABBIT

But the blackcat is one of two animals which have no fear of the quillpig. Blackbear is the other. With its swift, sinuous gait, the pekan came closer, whereupon Quillpig unwillingly stopped his sawing and thrust his head under the broken, frozen staves of the barrel. His belly hugged the ground, and in an instant he seemed to swell to double his normal size as he erected his quills and lashed this way and that with his spiked tail. Pure white, with dark tips, the quills were thickly barbed down to the extreme point, which is smooth and keen. The barbs are envenomed, and wherever they touch living flesh cause it to rankle, swell, and fester for all save the pekan, whose flesh is immune to the virus.

To-night the blackcat wasted no time. Disregarding the bristling quills and the lashing tail, the crafty weasel suddenly inserted a quick paw beneath the gnawer, and with a tremendous jerk tipped him over on his bristling back. Before the quillpig could right himself, the fisher had torn open his unguarded belly, and proceeded to eat the quivering, flabby meat as if from the shell of an oyster, or to be more accurate, a sea urchin. Throughout these proceedings he disregarded the quills entirely. Many of them pierced his skin. Others were swallowed along with the mouthfuls of warm flesh, which he tore out and greedily devoured. By reason of some unknown charm, the barbed quills work out of a blackcat without harm, and pass through his intestines in clusters, like packages of needles, without any inconvenience, although in any other animal save the bear they would inevitably cause death.

As the pekan ate and ate, the stars began to dim in the blue-black sky, and a faint flush in the east announced the end of his hunting day. With a farewell mouthful, he started back through the snow for his hollow tree, making a long detour, to bring in the cached marten. As he approached the tree from whose crotch the slim golden body dangled, his leisurely lope changed into a series of swift bounds. For the first time, a snarl came from behind the pekan’s mask. The dead marten was gone from the tree. In an open space which the wind had swept nearly clear of snow, it lay under the huge paws of a shadowy gray animal, with luminous pale yellow eyes, a curious bob of a tail, and black tufted ears. For all the world, it looked like a gray cat, but such a cat as never lived in a house. Three feet long, and forty pounds in weight, the Canada lynx is surpassed in size only among its North American relatives by that huger yellow cat, the puma or panther.

At the snarl of the fisher, the cat looked up, and at the sight of the gliding black figure gave a low spitting growl and contemptuously dropped his great head to the marten’s bloody throat. For a moment the big black weasel and the big gray cat faced each other. At first sight, it did not seem possible that the smaller animal would attack the larger, or that, if he did, he would last long. The fisher was less than half the size and weight of the lynx, who also outwardly seemed to have more of a fighting disposition. The tufted ears alert, the eyes gleaming like green fire, and the bristling hair and arched back, contrasted formidably with the broad forehead and round, honest face of the fisher.

So, at least, it seemed to young Jim Linklater, who, with his uncle Dave, the trapper, lay crouched close in a hemlock copse. Long before daylight, the two had traveled on silent snowshoes up the river bank, laying a trap-line, carrying nothing but a back-load of steel traps. At the rasping growl of the lynx, they peered out of their covert only to find themselves not thirty feet away from the little arena.