Wood folk at school

by William J. Long

A few days later I saw the grumpy old brute again in a curious way. I was sweeping the lake with my field glasses when I saw what I thought was a pair of black ducks near a grassy shore. I paddled over, watching them keenly, till a root seemed to rise out of the water between them. Before I could get my glasses adjusted again they had disappeared. I dropped the glasses and paddled faster. They were diving, perhaps—an unusual thing for black ducks—and I might surprise them. There they were again; and there again was the old root bobbing up unexpectedly between them. I whipped my glasses up—the mystery vanished. The two ducks were the tips of Umquenawis’ big antlers; the root that rose between them was his head, as he came up to breathe.

It was a close, sultry afternoon; the flies and mosquitos were out in myriads, and Umquenawis had taken a philosophical way of getting rid of them. He was lying in the water, over a bed of mud, his body completely submerged. As the swarm of flies that pestered him rose to his head he would sink it slowly, drowning them off. Through my glass, as I drew near, I could see a cloud of them hovering above the wavelets, or covering the exposed antlers. After a few moments there would be a bubbling grumble down in the mud, as Umquenawis blew the air from his great lungs. His head would come up lazily to breathe among the popping bubbles; the flies would settle upon him like a cloud, and he would disappear again, blinking sleepily as he went down, with an air of immense satisfaction.

It seemed too bad to disturb such comfort; but I wanted to know more about the surly old tyrant that had treated me with such scant courtesy; so I stole near him again, running up when his head disappeared, and lying quiet whenever he came up to breathe. He saw me at last when I was quite near, and leaped up with a terrible start. There was fear in his eyes this time. Here was the man-fish again, the creature that lived on land or water, and that could approach him so silently that the senses in which he had always trusted gave him no warning. He stared hard for a moment; then as the canoe glided rapidly straight towards him without fear or hesitation he waded out, stopping every instant to turn, and look, and try the wind, till he reached the fringe of woods beyond the grasses. There he thrust his nose up ahead of him, laid his big antlers back on his shoulders, and plowed straight through the tangle like a great engine, the alders snapping and crashing merrily about him as he went.

In striking contrast was the next meeting. I was out at midnight, jacking, and passed close by a point where I had often seen the big bull’s tracks. He was not there, and I closed the jack and went on along the shore, listening for any wood folk that might be abroad. When I came back, a few minutes later, there was a suspicious ripple on the point. I opened the jack, and there was Umquenawis, my big bull, standing out huge and magnificent against the shadowy background, his eyes glowing and flashing in fierce wonder at the sudden brightness. He had passed along the shore within twenty yards of me, through dense underbrush,—as I found out from his tracks next morning,—yet so silently did he push his great bulk through the trees, halting, listening, trying the ground at every step for telltale twigs ere he put his weight down, that I had heard no sound, though I was listening intently in the dead hush that was on the lake.

It may have been curiosity, or the uncomfortable sense of being watched and followed by the man-fish, who neither harmed nor feared him, that brought Umquenawis at last to our camp to investigate. One day Noel was washing some clothes of mine in the lake when some subtle warning made him turn his head. There stood the big bull, half hidden by the dwarf spruces, watching him intently. On the instant Noel left the duds where they were and bolted along the shore under the bushes, calling me loudly to come quick and bring my rifle. When we went back Umquenawis had trodden the clothes into the mud, and vanished as silently as he came.

The Indians grew insistent at this, telling me of the hunter that had been killed, claiming now, beyond a doubt, that this was the same bull, and urging me to kill the ugly brute and rid the woods of a positive danger. But Umquenawis was already learning the fear of me, and I thought the lesson might be driven home before the summer was ended. So it was; but before that time there was almost a tragedy.

One day a timber cruiser—a lonely, silent man with the instincts of an animal for finding his way in the woods, whose business it is to go over timber lands to select the best sites for future cutting—came up to the lake and, not knowing that we were there, pitched by a spring a mile or two below us. I saw the smoke of his camp fire from the lake, where I was fishing, and wondered who had come into the great solitude. That was in the morning. Towards twilight I went down to bid the stranger welcome and to invite him to share our camp, if he would. I found him stiff and sore by his fire, eating raw-pork sandwiches with the appetite of a wolf. Almost at the same glance I saw the ground about a tree torn up, and the hoof marks of a big bull moose all about.—

“Hello! friend, what’s up?” I hailed him.

“Got a rifle?” he demanded, with a rich Irish burr in his voice, paying no heed to my question. When I nodded he bolted for my canoe, grabbed my rifle, and ran away into the woods.

“Queer Dick! unbalanced, perhaps, by living too much alone in the woods,” I thought, and took to examining the torn ground and the bull’s tracks to find out for myself what had happened.