The Heart of the Ancient Wood

“Oh, pretty pussy! pretty pussy!” called Miranda, stretching out her hands to it coaxingly, and running into the wood.

The brown cat waited unwinking till she was about ten paces off, then turned and darted deeper into the shadows. When it was all but out of sight it stopped, turned again, and sat up to watch the eager child. It seemed curious as to the bit of scarlet at her neck. Miranda was now absorbed in the pursuit, and sanguine of catching the beautiful pussy. This time she was suffered to come almost within grasping distance, before the animal again wheeled with an angry pfuff and darted away. Disappointed, but not discouraged, Miranda followed again; and the little play was repeated, with slight variation, till her great eyes were full of blinding tears, and she was ready to drop with weariness. Then the malicious cat, tired of the game and no longer curious about the ribbon, vanished altogether; and Miranda sat down to cry.

But she was not a child to make much fuss over a small disappointment. In a very few minutes she jumped up, dried her eyes with the backs of her tiny fists, and started, as she thought, straight for home. At first she ran, thinking her mother might be troubled at her absence. But not coming to the open as soon as she expected, she stopped, looked about her very carefully, and then walked forward with continual circumspection. She walked on, and on, till she knew she had gone far enough to reach home five times over. Her feet faltered, and then she stood quite still, helplessly. She knew that she was lost. All at once the ancient wood, the wood she had longed for, the wood whose darkness she had never feared, became lonely, menacing, terrible. She broke into loud wailing.

This is what Kroof had heard and was coming to investigate. But other ears heard it, too.

A tawny form, many times larger than the perfidious brown cat, but not altogether unlike it in shape, crept stealthily toward the sound. Though his limbs looked heavy, his paws large in comparison with his lank body and small, flat, cruel head, his movements nevertheless were noiseless as light. At each low-stooping, sinuous step, his tail twitched nervously. When he caught sight of the crying child he stopped, and then crept up more stealthily than before, crouching so low that his belly almost touched the ground, his neck stretched out in line with his tail.

He made absolutely no sound, yet something within Miranda’s sensitive brain heard him, before he was quite within springing distance. She stopped her crying, glanced suddenly around, and fixed a darkly clear look upon his glaring green eyes. Poor little frightened and lonely child though she was, there was yet something subtly disturbing to the beast in that steady gaze of hers. It was the empty gloom, the state of being lost which had made Miranda’s fear. Of an animal, however fierce, she had no instinctive terror; and now, though she knew that the cruel-eyed beast before her was the panther, it was a sort of indignant curiosity that was uppermost in her mind.

The beast shifted his eyes uneasily under her unwavering look. He experienced a moment’s indecision as to whether or not it was well, after all, to meddle with this unterrified, clear-gazing creature. Then an anger grew within him. He fixed his hypnotizing stare more resolutely, and lashed his tail with angry jerks. He was working himself up to the final and fatal spring, while Miranda watched him.

Just then a strange thing happened. Out from behind a boulder, whence she had been eying the situation, shambled the huge black form of Kroof. She was at Miranda’s side in an instant; and rising upon her hind quarters, a towering, indomitable bulk, she squealed defiance to the panther. As soon as Miranda saw her “great big dog,” – which she knew quite well, however, to be a bear, – she seemed to realize how frightened she had been of the panther; and she recognized that strong defence had come. With a convulsive sob she sprang and hid her tear-stained little face in the bear’s shaggy flank, clutching at the soft fur with both hands. To this impetuous embrace Kroof paid no attention, but continued to glower menacingly at the panther.

As for the panther, he was unaffectedly astonished. He lost his stealthy, crouching, concentrated attitude, and rose to his full height; lifted his head, dropped his tail, and stared at the phenomenon. If this child was a protégée of Kroof’s, he wanted none of her; for it would be a day of famine indeed when he would wish to force conclusions with the giant she-bear. Moreover, he recognized some sort of power and prerogative in Miranda herself, some right of sovereignty, as it were, which had made it distinctly hard for him to attack her even while she had no other defence than her disconcerting gaze. Now, however, he saw clearly that there was something very mysterious indeed about her. He decided that it would be well to have an understanding with his mate – who was more savage though less powerful than himself – that the child should not be meddled with, no matter what chance should arise. With this conclusion he wheeled about, and walked off indifferently, moving with head erect and a casual air. One would hardly have known him for the stealthy monster of five minutes before.

When he was gone Kroof lay down on her side and gently coaxed Miranda against her body. Her bereaved heart went out to the child. Her swollen teats, too, were hotly aching, and she had a kind of hope that Miranda would ease that hurt. But this, of course, never came within scope of the child’s remotest idea. In every other respect, however, she showed herself most appreciative of Kroof’s attentions, stroking her with light little hands, and murmuring to her much musical endearment, to which Kroof lent earnest ear. Then, laying her head on the fine fur of the bear’s belly, she suddenly went fast asleep, being wearied by her wanderings and her emotions.

Late in the afternoon, toward milking-time, Kirstie aroused herself. She sat up with a startled air in her bunk in the corner of the cabin. Through the window came the rays of the westering sun. She felt troubled at having been so long asleep. And where could Miranda be? She arose, tottering for a moment, but soon found herself steady; and then she realized that she had slept off a sickness. She went to the door. The hens were diligently scratching in the dust, and Saunders eyed her with tolerance. At the fence beyond the barn the black-and-white cow lowed for the milking; and from her tether at the other side of the buckwheat field, Michael, the calf, bleated for her supper of milk and hay tea. But Miranda was nowhere to be seen.

“Miranda!” she called. And then louder, – and yet louder, – and at last with a piercing wail of anguish, as it burst upon her that Miranda was gone. The sunlit clearing, the grey cabin, the dark forest edges, all seemed to whirl and swim about her for an instant. It was only for an instant. Then she snatched up the axe from the chopping log, and with a sure instinct darted into that tongue of fir woods just behind the house.

Straight ahead she plunged, as if following a plain trail; though in truth she was little learned in woodcraft, and by her mere eyes could scarce have tracked an elephant. But her heart was clutched by a grip of ice, and she went as one tranced. All at once, however, over the mossy crest of a rock, she saw a sight which brought her to a standstill. Her eyes and her mouth opened wide in sheer amazement. Then the terrible tension relaxed. A strong shudder passed through her, and she was her steadfast self again. A smile broke up the sober lines of her face.

“Sure enough,” she muttered; “the child was right. She knows a sight more about the beasts than I do.”

And this is what she saw. Through the hoary arcades of the firwood walked a huge black bear, with none other than Miranda trotting by its side, and playfully stroking its rich coat. The great animal would pause from time to time, merely to nuzzle at the child with its snout or lick her hand with its narrow red tongue; but the course it was making was straight for the cabin. Kirstie stood motionless for some minutes, watching the strange scene; then, stepping out from her shelter, she hastened after them. So engrossed were they with each other that she came up undiscovered to within some twenty paces of them. Then she called out: —

“Miranda, where have you been?”

The child stopped, looked around, but still clung to Kroof’s fur.

“Oh, mother!” she cried, eager and breathless, and trying to tell everything at once, “I was all lost – and I was just going to be eaten up – and the dear, good, big bear came and frightened the panther away – and we were just going home – and do come and speak to the dear, lovely, big bear! Oh, don’t let it go away! don’t let it!”

But on this point Kroof had her own views. It was Miranda she had adopted, not Kirstie; and she felt a kind of jealousy of Miranda’s mother. Even while Miranda was speaking, the bear swung aside and briskly shambled off, leaving the child half in tears.

It was a thrilling story which Miranda had to tell her mother that evening, while the black-and-white cow was getting milked, and while Michael, the calf, was having its supper of milk and hay tea. It made a profound impression on Kirstie’s quick and tolerant mind. She at once realized the value to Miranda of such an affection as Kroof’s. Most mothers would have been crazed with foolish fear at the situation, but Kirstie Craig was of no such weak stuff. She saw in it only a strong shield for Miranda against the gravest perils of the wood.

Chapter VII

The Intimates

After this experience Miranda felt herself initiated, as she had so longed to be, into the full fellowship of the folk of the ancient wood. Almost every day Kroof came prowling about the edges of the clearing. Miranda was sure to catch sight of her before long and run to her with joyous caresses. Farther than a few steps into the open the big bear would not come, having no desire to cultivate Kirstie, or the cabin, or the cattle, or aught that appertained to civilization. But Kirstie, after watching from a courteous distance a few of these strange interviews, wisely gave the child a little more latitude. Miranda was permitted to go a certain fixed distance into the wood, but never so far as quite to lose sight of the cabin; and this permission was only for such times as she was with Kroof. Kirstie knew something about wild animals; and she knew that the black bear, when it formed an attachment, was inalienably and uncalculatingly loyal to it.

As sometimes happens in an affection which runs counter to the lines of kinship, Kroof seemed more passionately devoted to the child than she had been to her own cub. She would gaze with eyes of rapture, her mouth hanging half open in foolish fondness, while Miranda, playing about her, acquired innumerable secrets of forest-lore. Whatsoever Miranda wanted her to do, she would strive to do, as soon as she could make out what it was; for, in truth, Miranda’s speech, though very pleasant to her ear, was not very intelligible to her brain. On one point, however, she was inflexible. Perhaps for a distance of thrice her own length she would follow Miranda out into the clearing, but farther than that she would not go. Persuasions, petulance, argument, tears – Miranda tried them all, but in vain. When Miranda tried going behind and pushing, or going in front and pulling, the beast liked it, and her eyes would blink humorously. But her mind was made up. This obstinacy, so disappointing to Miranda, met with Kirstie’s unqualified but unexpressed approval. She did not want Kroof’s ponderous bulk hanging about the house or loafing around and getting in the way when she was at work in the fields.

Though Kroof was averse to civilization, she was at the same time sagacious enough to see that she could not have Miranda always with her in the woods. She knew very well that the tall woman with red on her head was a very superior and mysterious kind of animal, – and that Miranda was her cub, – a most superior kind of cub, and always to be regarded with a secret awe, but still a cub, and belonging to the tall woman. Therefore she was not aggrieved when she found that she could not have Miranda with her in the woods for more than an hour or two at a time. In that hour or two, however, much could be done; and Kroof tried to teach Miranda many things which it is held good to know among the folk of the ancient wood. She would sniff at the mould and dig up sweet-smelling roots; and Miranda, observing the stems and leaves of them, soon came to know all the edible roots of the neighbourhood. Kroof showed her, also, the delicate dewberry, the hauntingly delicious capillaire, hidden under its trailing vines, the insipidly sweet Indian pear, and the harmless but rather cotton-woolly partridge-berry; and she taught her to shun the tempting purple fruit of the trillium, as well as the deadly snake-berry. The blueberry, dear alike to bears and men, did not grow in the heavy-timbered forest, but Miranda had known that fruit well from those earliest days in the Settlement, when she had so often stained her mouth with blueberry pie. As for the scarlet clusters of the pigeon-berry, carpeting the hillocks of the pasture, Miranda needed no teaching from Kroof to know that these were good. Then, there were all sorts of forest fungi, of many shapes and colours, – white, pink, delicate yellow, shining orange covered with warts, creamy drab, streaky green, and even strong crimson. Toadstools, Miranda called them at first, with indiscriminating dread and aversion. But Kroof taught her better. Some, indeed, the red ones and the warty ones in particular, the wise animal would dash to pieces with her paw; and these Miranda understood to be bad. In fact, their very appearance had something ominous in it, and to Miranda’s eye they had poison written all over them in big letters. But there was one very white and dainty-looking, sweet-smelling fungus which she would have sworn to as virtuous. As soon as she saw it, she thought of a peculiarly shy mushroom (she loved mushrooms), and ran to pick it up in triumph. But Kroof thrust her aside with such rudeness that she fell over a stump, much offended. Her indignation died away, however, as she saw Kroof tearing and stamping the pale mushrooms to minutest fragments, with every mark of loathing. From this Miranda gathered that the beautiful toadstool was a very monster of crime. It was, indeed; for it was none other than the deadly amanita, one small morsel of which would have hushed Miranda into the sleep which does not wake.

Though Miranda was safe under Kroof’s tutelage, it was perhaps just as well for her at that period of her youth that she was forbidden to stray from the clearing. For there was, indeed, one tribe among the folk of the wood against whose anger Kroof’s protection would have very little availed. Had Miranda gone roaming, she and Kroof, they might have found a bee tree. It is doubtful if Kroof’s sagacity would have told her that Miranda’s skin was not adequate to an enterprise against bee trees. The zealous bear would have probably wanted honey for the child, and the result would have been such as to shake Kirstie’s confidence in Kroof’s judgment.

There were, however, several well-inhabited ant-logs in that narrow circuit which Miranda was allowed to tread, and on a certain afternoon Kroof discovered one of these. She was much pleased. Here was a chance to show Miranda something very nice and very good for her health. Having attracted the child’s attention, she ripped the rotten log to its heart, and began licking up the swarming insects and plump white larvæ together. Here was a treat; but the incomprehensible Miranda, with a shuddering scream, ran away. Kroof was bewildered. She finished the ants, however, while she was about it. Whereafter she was called upon to hear a long lecture from Miranda, to the effect that ants were not good to eat, and that it was very cruel to tear open their nests and steal their eggs. Of course, as Kroof did not at all understand what she was driving at, there was no room for an argument; which, considering the points involved, is much to be regretted.

Though Miranda had now, so to speak, the freedom of the wood, she was not really intimate with any of the furtive folk, saving only, of course, the irrepressible squirrels who lived in the cabin roof. She saw the wild creatures now very close at hand, and they went about their business under her eye without concern. They realized that it was no use trying with her their game of invisibility. No matter how perfect their stillness, no matter how absolutely they made themselves one with their surroundings, they felt her clear, unwavering, friendly eyes look them through and through. This was at first a troubling mystery to them. Who was this youngling, – for youth betrays itself even to the most primitive perceptions, – who, for all her youth, set their traditions and elaborate devices so easily at naught? Their instincts told them, however, that she was no foe to the weakest of them; and so they let her see them at their affairs unabashed, though avoiding her with a kind of careful awe.

Kroof, too, they all avoided, but with a difference. They knew that she was not averse to an occasional meal of flesh meat, but that she would not greatly trouble herself in pursuit of it. All they had to do, these lesser folk of the wood, was to keep at a safe distance from the sweep of her mighty paw, and they felt at ease in her neighbourhood. All but the hare —he knew that Kroof considered him and his long-eared children a special delicacy, well worth the effort of a bear. Miranda wondered why she could never see anything of the hare when she was out with Kroof. She did see him sometimes, indeed; but always at a distance, and for an instant only. On these occasions, Kroof did not see him at all; and Miranda soon came to realize that she could see more clearly than even the furtive folk themselves. They could hide themselves from each other by stillness and by self-effacement; but Miranda’s eyes always inexorably distinguished the ruddy fox from the yellow-brown, rotten log on which he flattened himself. She instantly differentiated the moveless nuthatch from the knot on the trunk, the squatting grouse from the lichened stone, the wood-mouse from the curled brown leaf, the crouching wild-cat from the mottled branch. Consequently the furtive folk gradually began to pay her the tribute of ignoring her, which meant that they trusted her to let them alone. They kept their reserve; but under her interested scrutiny the nuthatch would walk up the rough-barked pine trunk and pick insects out from under the grey scales; the golden-winged woodpecker would hunt down the fat, white grubs which he delighted in, and hammer sharply on the dead wood a few feet above her head; the slim, brown stoat would chase beetles among the tree roots, untroubled by her discreet proximity; the beruffed cock-grouse would drum from the top of his stump till the air was full of the soft thunder of his vauntings, and his half-grown brood would dust themselves in the deserted ant-hill in the sunniest corner of the clearing. Only the pair of crows which, seeing great opportunities about the reoccupied clearing, had taken up their dwelling in the top of a tall spruce close behind the cabin, held suspiciously aloof from Miranda. They often talked her over, in harsh tones that jarred the ancient stillness; and they considered her intimacy with Kroof altogether contrary to the order of things. Being themselves exemplars of duplicity, they were quite convinced that Miranda had ulterior motives, too deep for them to fathom; and they therefore respected her immensely. But they did not trust her, of course. The shy rain-birds, however, trusted her, and would whistle to each other their long, melancholy calls foretelling rain, even though she were standing within a few steps of them, and staring at them with all her might; and this was a most unheard-of favour on the part of the rain-birds, who are too reticent to let themselves be heard when any one is near enough to see them. There might be three or four uttering their slow, inexpressibly pathetic cadences all around the clearing; but Kirstie could never catch a glimpse of them, though many a time she listened with deep longing in her heart as their remote voices thrilled across the dewy oncoming of the dusk.

Miranda saw the panther only once again that year. It was about a month after her meeting with Kroof. She was alone, just upon the edge of the buckwheat field, and peering into the shadowy, transparent stillness to see what she could see. What she saw sent her little heart straight up into her mouth. There, not a dozen paces from her, lying flat along a fallen tree, was the panther. He was staring at her, with his eyes half shut. Startled though she was, Miranda’s experience with Kroof had made her very self-confident. She stood moveless, staring back into those dangerous, half-shut eyes. After a moment or two the beautiful beast arose and stretched himself with great deliberation, reaching out and digging in his claws, as an ordinary cat does when it stretches. At the same time he yawned prodigiously, so that it seemed to Miranda he would surely split to his ears, and she looked right into his great pink throat. Then he stepped lightly down from the tree, – on the side farthest from Miranda, – and walked away with the air of not wishing to intrude.

This same summer, too, so momentous in its events, Miranda first met Wapiti, the delicate-antlered buck, and Ganner, the big Canada lynx. Needless to say, they were not in company. One morning, as she sat in a fence corner, absorbed in building a little house of twigs around a sick butterfly, she heard a loud snort just at her elbow. Much startled, she gave a little cry as she looked up, and something jumped back from the fence. She saw a bright brown head, crowned with splendid, many-pronged antlers, and a pair of large, liquid eyes looking at her with mild wonder.

“Oh, you be-autiful deer, did I frighten you?” she cried, knowing the visitor by pictures she had seen; and she poked her little hand through the fence in greeting. The buck seemed very curious about the scarlet ribbon at her neck, and eyed it steadily for half a minute. Then he came close up to the fence again, and sniffed her hand with his fine black nostrils, opening and closing them sensitively. He let her stroke his smooth muzzle, and held his head quite still under the caressing of her hand. Then some unusual sound caught his ear. It was Kirstie hoeing potatoes near by; and presently the furrow she was following brought her into view behind the corner of the barn. The scarlet kerchief on her hair flamed hotly in the sun. The buck raised his head high, and stared, and finally seemed to decide that the apparition was a hostile one. With a snort, and an impatient stamp of his polished hoof, he wheeled about and trotted off into the wood.

Her introduction to Ganner, the lynx, was under less gracious auspices.

Michael, the calf, who had been growing excellently all summer, was kept tethered during the daytime to a stake in a corner of the wild-grass meadow, about fifty yards from the edge of the forest. A little nearer the cabin was a long thicket of blackberry brakes and elder bushes and wild clematis, forming a dense tangle, in which Miranda had, with great pains and at the cost of terrific scratches, formed herself a delectable hiding-place. Here she would play house, and sometimes take a nap, in the hot mornings, while her mother would be at work acres away, at the very opposite side of the clearing.

One day, about eleven in the morning, Michael was lying at the limit of her tether nearest the cabin, when she saw a strange beast come out of the forest and halt to look at her. The animal was of a greyish rusty brown, very pale on the belly and neck, and nearly as tall as Michael herself; but its body was curiously short in proportion to the length of its powerful legs. It had a perfectly round face, with round glaring eyes, long stiff black tufts on the tips of its sharp-pointed ears, and a fierce-looking, whitish brown whisker brushed away, as it were, from under its chin. Its tail was a mere thick, brown stump of a tail, looking as if it had been chopped off short. The creature gazed all around, warily; then crouched low, its hind quarters rather higher in the air than its fore shoulders, and stepping softly, came straight for Michael.