About seventeen miles from Ringwaak the road crossed the Ottanoonsis, whose wild current filled the valley with noise and formed an impassable northern frontier to the Ringwaak region. It was generally believed that the wild creatures of the Ringwaak region held little intercourse with those north of the Ottanoonsis, by reason of that stream's turbulence. As soon as Ramsay found himself across the bridge he stopped and once more drew his hunting-knife. At the flash of the blade the captive looked up wonderingly from his bonds. Leaning over him, the old man's face broke into a sheepish grin. But he did not hesitate. Three or four properly distributed strokes of the knife, and the ropes fell apart. The captive lifted his splendid head, kicked, and struggled to his feet, bewildered.
"Now," said Ramsay, "Git!"
As he spoke he snapped his long whip sharply. With a magnificent leap the buck went out and over the wheels and vanished with great sailing bounds into the wild Ottanoonsis forest. Then Ramsay turned slowly back toward home, thinking a thrilling story for the settlement about the cunning escape of the Ringwaak buck.
The Heron in the Reeds
OUGH haying was almost done on the uplands, over the wide, level, treeless meadow-island the heavy grass stood still uncut, its rank growth taking long to ripen. The warm wind that drew across it from time to time in a vague, elusive rhythm was burdened with rich summer scents, the mid-noon distillations from the vetch and clover and lily and yellow-daisy blooms which thronged among the grass-heads, and from the flaunting umbels of the wild parsnip which towered above them. Over this radiant and pregnant luxuriance the air quivered softly, and hummed with the murmur of foraging bees and flies, glad in the heat.
The island lay on the tranquil river like a splendid green enamel on blue porcelain. Its level, at this season, lay several feet above that of the water, and its shores, fantastically looped with little, sweeping coves and jutting points, were fringed with deep rushes of intense, glaucous green. Whenever the wind puffed lightly over them, the tops of the rushes bowed gravely together in long ranks, and turned silvery gray. Here and there above them fluttered a snipe, signalling its hidden young, then winging off across the water to the next point, with a clear, two-noted whistle.
On one of the little jutting points, where a log lay half-submerged in trailing water-weeds, stood a tall blue heron balanced motionless on one long, stilt-like leg. Its head, drawn flat back between the high shoulders, came about ten inches above the tops of the sedge. Its long, keen, javelin-like beak lay along its protruding breast, in readiness to dart in any direction. Its round, gem-like eyes, hard as glass in their glitter, took in not only the wide, blue-and-green empty landscape, but equally every movement of the sedge-fringe and the weedy shallows along-shore.
For some minutes the great bird was as still as a carven figure. Then, for no apparent reason, the long neck uncoiled violently like a loosed crossbow, and the javelin beak shot downward with a movement almost too swift for the eye to follow. Deep into the weeds and water it darted,—to return with a small, silvery chub securely transfixed. One smart, sidelong blow of the wriggling fish upon the log ended its struggles. Then the skilful fisher threw his prize up in the air, caught it as it fell, swallowed it head foremost, and relapsed into his watchful immobility.