The canoe shot up behind a point where, looking over the low bank, I had the arena directly under my eye. The animal was a fisher—black-cat the trappers call him—the most savage and powerful fighter of his size in the whole world, I think. In the instant that I first saw him, quicker than thought he had hurled himself twice at the towering bird’s breast. Each time he was met by a lightning blow in the face from Quoskh’s stiffened wing. His teeth ground the big quills to pulp; his claws tore them into shreds; but he got no grip in the feathery mass, and he slipped, clawing and snarling, into the grass, only to spring again like a flash. Again the stiff wing blow; but this time his jump was higher; one claw gripped the shoulder, tore its way through flying feathers to the bone, while his weight dragged the big bird down. Then Quoskh shortened her neck in a great curve. Like a snake it glided over the edge of her own wing for two short, sharp down-thrusts of the deadly javelin—so quick that my eye caught only the double yellow flash of it. With a sharp screech the black-cat leaped away and whirled towards me blindly. One eye was gone; an angry red welt showed just over the other, telling how narrowly the second thrust had missed its mark.
A shiver ran over me as I remembered how nearly I had once come myself to the black-cat’s condition, and from the same keen weapon. I was a small boy at the time, following a big, good-natured hunter that I met in the woods, one day, from pure love of the wilds and for the glory of carrying the game bag. He shot a great blue heron, which fell with a broken wing into some soft mud and water grass. Carelessly he sent me to fetch it, not caring to wet his own feet. As I ran up, the heron lay resting quietly, his neck drawn back, his long keen bill pointing always straight at my face. I had never seen so big a bird before, and bent over him wondering at his long bill, admiring his intensely bright eye.
I did not know then—what I have since learned well—that you can always tell when the rush or spring or blow of any beast or bird—or of any man, for that matter—will surely come by watching the eye closely. There is a fire that blazes in the eye before the blow comes, before ever a muscle has stirred to do the brain’s quick bidding. As I bent over, fascinated by the keen, bright look of the wounded bird, and reached down my hand to pick him up, there was a flash deep in the eye, like the glint of sunshine from a mirror, and I dodged instinctively. Well for me that I did so. Something shot by my face like lightning, opening up a long red gash across my left temple from eye-brow to ear. As I jumped I heard a careless laugh. "Look out, Sonny, he may bite you—Gosh! what a close call!" And with a white, scared face, as he saw the ugly wound that the heron’s beak had opened, he dragged me away as if there had been a bear in the water grass.
The black-cat had not yet received punishment enough. He is one of the largest of the weasel family, and has a double measure of the weasel’s savageness and tenacity. He darted about the heron in a quick, nervous, jumping circle, looking for an opening behind; while Quoskh lifted her great torn wings as a shield and turned slowly on the defensive, so as always to face the danger. A dozen times the fisher jumped, filling the air with feathers; a dozen times the stiffened wings struck down to intercept his spring, and every blow was followed by a swift javelin thrust. Then, as the fisher crouched snarling in the grass, off his guard for an instant, I saw Mother Quoskh take a sudden step forward, her first offensive move—just as I had seen her twenty times at the finish of a frog stalk—and her bill shot down with the whole power of her long neck behind it. A harsh screech of pain followed the swift blow; then the fisher wobbled away with blind, uncertain jumps towards the shelter of the woods.
“A DOZEN TIMES THE FISHER JUMPED, FILLING THE AIR WITH FEATHERS”
And now, with her savage enemy in full flight, a fierce, hot anger seemed to flare within the mother heron, burning out all the previous cool, calculating defense. Her wings heaved aloft, as the soldiers of old threw up their shields in the moment of victory; while her whole frame seemed to swell with power, like a hero whose fight is won. She darted after the fisher, first on the run, then with heavy wing beats, till she headed him and with savage blows of pinion and beak drove him back, seeing nothing, guided only by fear and instinct, towards the water. For five minutes more she chevied him hither and yon through the trampled grass, driving him from water to bush and back again, jabbing him at every turn; till a rustle of leaves invited him, and he dashed blindly into thick underbrush, where her broad wings could not follow. Then with marvelous watchfulness she saw me standing near in my canoe; and without a thought, apparently, for the young heron lying so still in the grass close beside her, she spread her torn wings and flapped away heavily in the path of her more fortunate younglings.
I followed the fisher’s trail into the woods and found him curled up in a hollow stump. He made slight resistance as I pulled him out. All his ferocity was already lulled to sleep in the vague, dreamy numbness which Nature always sends to her stricken creatures. He suffered nothing, apparently, though he was fearfully wounded; he just wanted to be let alone. Both eyes were gone, and there was nothing left for me except to finish mercifully what little Quoskh had left undone.
