The Heart of the Ancient Wood

Inexperienced as Michael was, she knew that this was nothing less than death itself approaching her. She sprang up, her awkward legs spread wide apart, her whole weight straining on the tether, her eyes, rolling white, fixed in horror on the dreadful object. From her throat came a long, shrill bleat of appeal and despair.

There was no mistaking that cry. It brought Miranda from her playhouse in an instant. In the next instant she took in the situation. “Mother! Mothe-e-er!” she screamed at the top of her voice, and flew to the defence of her beloved Michael.

The lynx, at this unexpected interference, stopped short. Miranda did not look formidable, and he was not alarmed by any means. But she looked unusual, – and that bit of bright red at her throat might mean something which he did not understand, – and there was something not quite natural, something to give him pause, in a youngster displaying this reckless courage. For a second or two, therefore, he sat straight up like a cat, considering; and his tufted ears the while, very erect, with the strange whiskers under his chin, gave him an air that was fiercely dignified. His hesitation, however, was but for a moment. Satisfied that Miranda did not count, he came on again, more swiftly; and Miranda, seeing that she had failed to frighten him away, just flung her arms around Michael’s neck and screamed.

The scream should have reached Kirstie’s ear across the whole breadth of the clearing; but a flaw of wind carried it away, and the cabin intervened to dull its edge. Other ears than Kirstie’s, however, heard it; heard, too, and understood Michael’s bleating. The black-and-white cow was far away, in another pasture. (Kirstie saw her running frantically up and down along the fence, and thought the flies were tormenting her.) But just behind the thicket lay the two steers, Bright and Star, contemplatively chewing their midday cud. Both had risen heavily to their feet at Michael’s first appeal. As Miranda’s scream rang out, Bright’s sorrel head appeared around the corner of the thicket, anxious to investigate. He stopped at sight of Ganner, held his muzzle high in air, snorted loudly, and shook his head with a great show of valour. Immediately after him came Star, the black-and-white brindle. But of a different temper was he. The moment his eyes fell upon Michael’s foe and Miranda’s, down went his long, straight horns, up went his brindled tail, and with a bellow of rage he charged.

The gaunt steer was an antagonist whom Ganner had no stomach to face. With an angry snarl, which showed Miranda a terrifying set of white teeth in a very red mouth, he turned his stump of a tail, laid flat his tufted ears, and made for the forest with long, splendid leaps, his exaggerated hind legs seeming to volley him forward like a ball. In about five seconds he was out of sight among the trees; and Star, snorting and switching his tail, stood pawing the turf haughtily in front of Miranda and Michael.

It was Miranda who named the big lynx “Ganner” that day; because, as she told her mother afterward, that was what he said when Star came and drove him away.

Chapter VIII

Axe and Antler

The next winter went by in the main much like the former one. But more birds came to be fed as the season advanced, because Miranda’s fame had gone abroad amongst them. The snow was not so deep, the cold not so severe. No panther came again to claw at their roof by night. But there were certain events which made the season stand out sharply from all others in the eyes of both Kirstie and Miranda.

Throughout December and January Wapiti, the buck, with two slim does accompanying him, would come and hang about the barn for several days at a time, nibbling at the scattered straw. With the two steers, Star and Bright, Wapiti was not on very good terms. They would sometimes thrust at him resentfully, whereupon he would jump aside, as if on springs, stamp twice sharply with his polished fore hoofs, and level at them the fourteen threatening spear points of his antlers. But the challenge never came to anything. As for the black-and-white cow, she seemed to admire Wapiti greatly, though he met her admiration with the most lofty indifference. One day Miranda let him and the two does lick some coarse salt out of a dish, after which enchanting experience all three would follow her straight up to the cabin door. They even took to following Kirstie about, which pleased and flattered her more than she would acknowledge to Miranda, and earned them many a cold buckwheat pancake. To them the cold pancakes, though leathery and tough, were a tit-bit of delight; but along in January they tore themselves away from such raptures and removed to other feeding grounds.

Toward spring, to Miranda’s great delight, she made acquaintance with Ten-Tine, the splendid bull caribou whom she had just seen the winter before. He and his antlered cows were migrating southward by slow stages. They were getting tired of the dry moss and lichen of the barrens which lay a week’s journey northward from the clearing. They began to crave the young shoots of willow and poplar that would now be bursting with sap along the more southerly streams. Looking from the window one morning, before the cattle had been let out, Miranda saw Ten-Tine emerge from the woods and start with long, swinging strides across the open. His curiously flattened, leaf-like antlers lay back on a level with his shoulders, and his nose pointed straight before him. The position was just the one to enable him to go through the woods without getting his horns entangled. From the middle of his forehead projected, at right angles to the rest of the antlers, two broad, flat, palmated prongs, a curious enlargement of the central ones. His cows, whose antlers were little less splendid than his own, but lacking in the frontal projection, followed at his heels. In colour he was of a very light, whitish-drab, quite unlike the warm brown of Wapiti’s coat.

In passing the barn Ten-Tine caught sight of some tempting fodder, and stopped to try it. Kirstie’s straw proved very much to the taste of the whole herd. While they were feeding delightedly, Miranda stole out to make friends with them. She took, as a tribute, a few handfuls of the hens’ buckwheat, in a bright yellow bowl. As she approached, Ten-Tine lifted his fine head and eyed her curiously. Had it been the rutting season, he would no doubt have straightway challenged her to mortal combat. But now, unless he saw a wolf, a panther, or a lynx, he was good-tempered and inquisitive. This small creature looked harmless, and there was undoubtedly something quite remarkable about her. What was that shining thing which she held out in front of her? And what was that other very bright thing around her neck? He stopped feeding, and watched her intently, his head held in an attitude of indecision, just a little lower than his shoulders. The cows took a look also, and felt curious, but were concerned rather to satisfy their hunger than their curiosity. They left the matter easily to Ten-Tine.

Miranda had learned many things already from her year among the folk of the wood. One of these things was that all the furtive folk dreaded and resented rough movement. Their manners were always beyond reproach. The fiercest of them moved ever with an aristocratic grace and poise. They knew the difference between swiftness and haste. All abruptness they abhorred. In lines of beauty they eluded their enemies. They killed in curves.

She did not, therefore, attempt to go straight up and take Ten-Tine’s acquaintance by storm. She paused discreetly some dozen steps away, held out the dish to him, and murmured her inarticulate, soft persuasions. Not being versed in the caribou tongue, she trusted the tones of her voice to reveal her good intention.

Seeing that she would come no nearer, Ten-Tine’s curiosity refused to be balked. But he was dubious, very dubious. Like Wapiti, he stamped when he was in doubt; but the hoofs he stamped with were much larger, broader, clumsier, less polished than Wapiti’s, being formed for running over such soft surfaces as bogland and snow insufficiently packed, where Wapiti’s trim feet would cut through like knives.

Step by step he drew nearer. There was something in Miranda’s clear gaze that gave him confidence. At length he was near enough to touch the yellow bowl with his flexible upper lip. He saw that the bowl contained something. He extended his muzzle over the rim, and, to Miranda’s surprise, blew into it. The grain flew in every direction, some of it sticking to his own moist lips. He drew back, a little startled. Then he licked his lips; and he liked the taste. Back went his muzzle into the interesting bowl; and, after sniffing again very gently, he licked up the whole contents.

“Oh, greedy!” exclaimed Miranda, in tender rebuke, and started back to the cabin to get him some more.

“Wouldn’t Saunders be cross,” she thought to herself, “if he knew I was giving his buckwheat to the nice deer?”

Ten-Tine followed close behind her, sniffing inquisitively at the red ribbon on her neck. When Miranda went in for the buckwheat, he tried to enter with her, but his antlers had too much spread for the doorway. Kirstie, who was busy sweeping, looked up in amazement as the great head darkened her door.

“Drat the child!” she exclaimed; “she’ll be bringing all the beasts of the wood in to live with us before long.”

She did not grudge Ten-Tine the few handfuls of buckwheat, however, though he blew half of it over the floor so that she had to sweep it up. When he had finished, and perceived that no more was forthcoming, he backed off reluctantly from the door and began smelling around the window-sill, pushing his curious nose tentatively against the glass.

Now it chanced that all the way down from the barrens Ten-Tine and his little herd had been hungrily pursued, although they did not know it. Four of the great grey timber wolves were on their track. Savage but prudent, the wolves were unwilling to attack the herd, for they knew the caribou’s fighting prowess. But they awaited a chance to cut off one of the cows and hunt her down alone. For days they had kept the trail, faring very scantly by the way; and now they were both ravenous and enraged. Emerging from the woods, they saw the five cows at feed by the barn, with Ten-Tine nowhere in sight. The opportunity was too rare a one to miss. They seized it. All four gaunt forms abreast, they came galloping across the snow in silence, their long, grey snouts wrinkled, their white fangs uncovered, their grey-and-white shoulders rising and falling in unison, their cloudy tails floating straight out behind them.

Just in time the cows saw them coming. There was a half second of motionless consternation. Then nimbly they sprang into a circle, hind quarters bunched together, levelled antlers all pointing outward. It was the accurate inherited discipline of generations.

Without a sound, save a deep, gasping breath, the wolves made their leap, striving to clear that bayonet hedge of horns. Two were hurled back, yelping. One brought a cow to her knees, half clear of the circle, his fangs in her neck, and would have finished her but that her next neighbour prodded him so fiercely in the flank that he let go with a shrill snarl. But the fourth wolf found the weak point in the circle. The foolish young cow upon whom he sprang went wild at once with fright. She broke from the ring and fled. The next instant the wolf was at her throat.

The moment he pulled her down the other wolves sprang upon her. The rest of the cows, maintaining their position of defence, viewed her plight with considerable unconcern, doubtless holding that her folly was well served, and that she was worth no better end. But Ten-Tine, who had suddenly taken in the situation, had other views about it. To him the foolish young cow was most important. With a shrill note of rage, half bleat, half bellow, he charged down to the rescue. The first wolf he struck was hurled against the corner of the barn, and came limping back to the fray with no great enthusiasm. Upon the next he came down with both front feet, fairly breaking the creature’s back. Instantly the other two fastened upon his flanks, trying to pull him down; while he, bounding and rearing, strove heroically to shake them off in order to reach them with horns and hoofs. The bleeding cow, meanwhile, struggled to her feet and took refuge within the dauntless circle, which rather grudgingly opened to admit her. For this they must not be judged too harshly; for in caribou eyes she had committed the crime of crimes in breaking ranks and exposing the whole herd to destruction.

At this stage in the encounter the valiant Ten-Tine found himself in desperate straits; but help came from an unexpected quarter. The factor which the wolves had not allowed for was Kirstie Craig. At the first sight of them Kirstie had been filled with silent rage. She had believed that wolves were quite extinct throughout all the neighbouring forests; and now in their return she saw a perpetual menace. But at least they were scarce, she knew that; and on the instant she resolved that this little pack should meet no milder fate than extermination.

“It’s wolves! Don’t you stir outside this door!” she commanded grimly, in that voice which Miranda never dreamed of disobeying. Miranda, trembling with excitement, her eyes wide and her cheeks white, climbed to the window, and flattened her face against it. Kirstie rushed out, slamming the door.

As she passed the chopping-block, Kirstie snatched up her axe. Her fine face was set like iron. The black eyes blazed fury. It was a desperate venture, to attack three maddened wolves, with no ally to support her save a caribou bull; but Kirstie, as we have seen, was not a woman for half measures.

The first sweep of that poised and practised axe caught the nearest wolf just behind the fore quarters, and almost shore him in two. Thus suddenly freed on one side, Ten-Tine wheeled like lightning to catch his other assailant, but the animal sprang back. In evading Ten-Tine’s horns, he almost fell over Kirstie, who, thus balked of her full deadly swing, just managed to fetch him a short stroke under the jaw with the flat of the blade. It was enough, however, to fell him for an instant, and that instant was enough for Ten-Tine. Bounding into the air, the big caribou came down with both sharp fore hoofs, like chisels, squarely on the middle of his adversary’s ribs. The stroke was slaughterously decisive. Ribs of steel could not have endured it, and in a very few seconds the shape of bloody grey fur upon the snow bore scant resemblance to a wolf.

The last of the pack, who had been lamed by Ten-Tine’s onslaught, had prudently drawn off when he saw Kirstie coming. Now he turned tail. Kirstie, determined that not one should escape, gave chase. She could run as can few women. She was bent on her grim purpose of extermination. At first the wolf’s lameness hindered him; but just as he was about to turn at bay and fight dumbly to the death, after the manner of his kind, the effort which he had been making loosened the strained muscles, and he found his pace. Stretching himself out on his long gallop, he shot away from his pursuer as if she had been standing still.

Kirstie stopped, swung her axe, and hurled it after him with all her strength. It struck the mark. Had it struck true, edge on, it would have fulfilled her utmost intention; but it struck, with the thick of the head, squarely upon the brute’s rump. The blow sent him rolling end over end across the snow. He yelped with astonishment and terror; but recovering himself again in a second, he went bounding like a grey ball of fur over a brush heap, and vanished down the forest arches.

When Kirstie turned round she saw Miranda, white, pitiful, and bewildered, in the doorway; while Ten-Tine and his cows, without waiting to thank her, were trotting away across the white fields, their muzzles thrust far forward, their antlers laid along their backs. From Ten-Tine himself, and from the wounded young cow, the blood dripped scarlet and steaming at every stride.

Chapter IX

The Pax Mirandæ

After this experience, Kirstie would have been more anxious than before about Miranda, had it not been for the child’s remarkable friendship with the great she-bear. As soon as the snow was gone, and the ancient wood again began to lure Miranda with its mystic stillness and transparent twilight, Kroof reappeared, as devoted as ever. When Kroof was absent, the woods were to the child a forbidden realm, into which she could only peer with longing and watch the furtive folk with those initiated eyes of hers.

A little later when the mosses were dry, and when the ground was well heartened with the fecundating heats of June, Miranda had further proof of her peculiar powers of vision. One day she and Kroof came upon a partridge hen with her new-hatched brood, at the edge of a thicket of young birches. The hen went flopping and fluttering off among the trees, as if sorely wounded; and Kroof, convinced of a speedy capture, followed eagerly. She gave a glance about her first, however, to see if there were any partridge chicks in the neighbourhood. To Miranda’s astonishment, the wise animal saw none. But Miranda saw them distinctly. There they were all about her, moveless little brown balls, exactly like the leaves and the moss and the scattered things of the forest floor. Some were half hidden under a leaf or twig; some squatted in the open, just in the positions in which the alarm had found them. They shut their eyes even, to make themselves more at one with their surroundings. They would have endured any fate, they would have died on the spot, rather than move, so perfect was their baby obedience to the partridge law. This obedience had its reward. It gave them invisibility to all the folk of the wood, friends and foes alike. But there was no such thing as deceiving Miranda’s eyes. She was not concerned about the mother partridge, because she saw through her pretty trick and knew that Kroof could never catch her. Indeed, in her innocence she did not think good Kroof would hurt her if she did catch her, But these moveless chicks, on the other hand, were interesting. One – two – three – Miranda counted ten of them, and there were more about somewhere, she imagined. Presently the mother bird came flopping around in a circle, to see how things were going. She saw Miranda stoop and pick up one of the precious brown balls, and then another, curiously but gently. In her astonishment the distracted bird forgot Kroof for a second, and was almost caught. Escaping this peril by a sudden wild dash, and realizing that from Miranda there was no concealment, she flew straight into the densest part of the thicket and gave a peremptory call. At the sound each little motionless ball came to life. The two that were lying as if dead on Miranda’s outstretched palms hopped to the ground; and all darted into the thicket. A few low but sharply articulated clucks, and the mother bird led her brood off swiftly through the bush; while Kroof, somewhat crestfallen, came shambling back to Miranda.

All this time, in spite of the affair of the wolves, the attack of Ganner, the lynx, on Michael, and that tell-tale spot of blood and fur on the snow, where the owl had torn the hare for his midnight feast, Miranda had regarded the folk of the ancient wood as a gentle people, living for the most part in a voiceless amity. Her seeing eyes quite failed to see the unceasing tragedy of the stillness. She did not guess that the furtive folk, whom she watched about their business, went always with fear at their side and death lying in wait at every turn. She little dreamed that, for most of them, the very price of life itself was the ceaseless extinguishing of life.

It was during the summer that Miranda found her first and only flaw in Kroof’s perfections; for Kroof she regarded as second only to her mother among created beings. But on one memorable day, when she ran across the fields to meet Kroof at the edge of the wood, the great bear was too much occupied to come forward as usual. She was sniffing at something on the ground which she held securely under one of her huge paws. Miranda ran forward to see what it was.

To her horror it was the warm and bleeding body of a hare.

She shrank back, sickened at the sight. Then, in flaming indignation she struck Kroof again and again in the face with the palms of her little hands. Kroof was astonished, – temperately astonished, – for she always knew Miranda was peculiar. She lifted her snout high in the air to escape the blows, shut her eyes, and meekly withdrew the offending paw.

“Oh, Kroof, how could you! I hate you, bad Kroof! You are just like the wolves!” cried Miranda, her little bosom bursting with wrath and tears. Kroof understood that she was in grievous disgrace. Carrying the dead hare with her, Miranda ran out into the potato patch, fetched the hoe, returned to the spot where the bear still sat in penitential contemplation, and proceeded in condemnatory silence to dig a hole right under Kroof’s nose. Here she buried the hare, tenderly smoothing the ground above it. Then throwing the hoe down violently, she flung her arms about Kroof’s neck, and burst into a passion of tears.

“How could you do it, Kroof?” she sobbed. “Oh, perhaps you’ll be wanting to eat up Miranda some day!”

Kroof suffered herself to be led away from the unhappy spot. Soon Miranda grew calm, and the painful scene seemed forgotten. The rest of the afternoon was spent very pleasantly in eating wild raspberries along the farther side of the clearing. To Kroof’s mind it gradually became clear that her offence lay in killing the hare; and as it was obvious that Miranda liked hares, she resolved never to offend again in this respect, at least while Miranda was anywhere in the neighbourhood. After Miranda had gone home, however, the philosophical Kroof strolled back discreetly to where the hare was buried. She dug it up, and ate it with great satisfaction, and afterward she smoothed down the earth again, that Miranda might not know.

After this trying episode Miranda had every reason to believe that Kroof’s reformation was complete. Little by little, as month followed month, and season followed season, and year rolled into year at the quiet cabin in the clearing, Miranda forgot the few scenes of blood which had been thrust upon her. The years now little varied one from another; yet to Miranda the life was not monotonous. Each season was for her full of events, full of tranquil uneventfulness for Kirstie. The cabin became more homelike as currant and lilac bushes grew up around it, a green, sweet covert for birds, and abundant scarlet-blossomed bean-vines mantled the barrenness of its weathered logs. The clearing prospered. The stock increased. Old Dave hardly ever visited at the clearing but he went back laden with stuff to sell for Kirstie at the Settlement. Among the folk of the forest Miranda’s ascendency kept on growing, little by little, till, though none of the beasts came to know her as Kroof did, they all had a tendency to follow her at respectful distance, without seeming to do so. They never killed in her presence, so that a perpetual truce, as it were, came at last to rule within eyeshot of her inescapable gaze. Sometimes the advent of spring would bring Kroof to the clearing not alone, but with a furry and jolly black morsel of a cub at her side. The cub never detracted in the least from the devotion which she paid to Miranda. It always grew up to young bearhood in more or less amiable tolerance of its mother’s incomprehensible friend, only to drift away at last to other feeding grounds; for Kroof was absolute in her own domain, and suffered not even her own offspring to trespass thereon, when once they had reached maturity. Cubs might come, and cubs might go; but the love of Kroof and Miranda was a thing that rested unchanging.

In the winters, Miranda now did most of the knitting, while Kirstie wove, on a great clacking loom, the flax which her little farm produced abundantly. They had decided not to keep sheep at the clearing, lest their presence should lure back the wolves. One warm day toward spring, when Old Dave, laden with an ample pack of mittens, stockings, and socks which Miranda’s active fingers had fashioned, was slowly trudging along the trail on his way back to the Settlement, he became aware that a pair of foxes followed him. They came not very near, nor did they pay him any marked attention. They merely seemed to “favour his company,” as he himself put it. He was thus curiously escorted for perhaps a mile or two, to his great bewilderment; for he knew no reason why he should be so chosen out for honour in the wood. At another time, when similarly burdened, Wapiti, the buck, came up and sniffed at him, very amicably. During the next winter, when he was carrying the same magic merchandise, several hares went leaping beside him, not very near, but as if seeking the safety of his presence. The mystery of all this weighed upon him. He was at first half inclined to think that he was “ha’nted”; but fortunately he took thought to examine the tracks, and so assured himself that his inexplicable companions were of real flesh and blood. Nevertheless, he found himself growing shy of his periodical journeyings through the wood, and at last he opened his mind to Kirstie on the subject.