The Heart of the Ancient Wood

Kirstie was amused in her grave way.

“Why, Dave,” she explained, “didn’t you know Miranda was that thick with the wild things she’s half wild herself? Weren’t you carrying a lot of Miranda’s knit stuff when the creatures followed you?”

“That’s so, Kirstie!” was the old lumberman’s reply. “I recollec’ as how the big buck kep’ a-sniffin’ at my pack of socks an’ mits, too!”

“They were some of Miranda’s friends; and when they smelled of those mits they thought she was somewhere around, or else they knew you must be a friend of hers.”

Thenceforward Old Dave always looked for something of a procession in his honour whenever he carried Miranda’s knittings to the Settlement; and he was intensely proud of the distinction. He talked about it among his gossips, of course; and therefore a lot of strange stories began to circulate. It was said by some that Kirstie and Miranda held converse with the beasts in plain English such as common mortals use, and knew all the secrets of the woods, and much besides that “humans” have no call to know. By others, more superstitious and fanatical, it was whispered that no mere animals formed the circle of Kirstie’s associates, but that spirits, in the guise of hares, foxes, cats, panthers, bears, were her familiars at the solitary cabin. Such malicious tales cost Old Dave many a bitter hour, as well as more than one sharp combat, till the gossips learned to keep a bridle on their tongues when he was by. As for Young Dave, he had let the clearing and all its affairs drop from his mind, and, betaking himself to a wild region to the north of the Quah-Davic, was fast making his name as a hunter and trapper. He came but seldom to the Settlement, and when he came he had small ear for the Settlement scandals. His mind was growing large, and quiet, and tolerant, among the great solitudes.

Chapter X

The Routing of the Philistines

In the seventh year of Kirstie’s exile, something occurred which gave the Settlement gossip a fresh impulse, and added a colour of awe to the mystery which surrounded the clearing.

The winter changed to a very open one, so that long before spring Kroof awoke in her lair under the pine root. There was not enough snow to keep her warm and asleep. But the ground was frozen, food was scarce, and she soon became hungry. Miranda observed her growing leanness, and tried the experiment of bringing her a mess of boiled beans from the cabin pot. To the hungry bear the beans were a revelation. She realized that Miranda’s mother was in some way connected with the experience, and her long reserve melted away in the warmth of her responsive palate. The next day, about noon, as Kirstie and Miranda were sitting down to their meal, Kroof appeared at the cabin door and sniffed longingly at the threshold.

“What’s that sniffing at the door?” wondered Kirstie, with some uneasiness in her grave voice. But Miranda had flown at once to the window to look out.

“Why, mother, it’s Kroof!” she cried, clapping her hands with delight, and before her mother could say a word, she had thrown the door wide open. In shambled the bear forthwith, blinking her shrewd little eyes. She seated herself on her haunches, near the table, and gazed with intent curiosity at the fire. At this moment a dry stick snapped and crackled sharply, whereupon she backed off to a safer distance, but still kept her eyes upon the strange phenomenon.

Both Kirstie and Miranda had been watching her with breathless interest, to see how she would comport herself, but now Miranda broke silence.

“Oh! you dear old Kroof, we’re so glad you’ve come at last to see us!” she cried, rushing over and flinging both arms around the animal’s neck. Kirstie’s face looked a doubtful indorsement of the welcome. Kroof paid no attention to Miranda’s caresses beyond a hasty lick at her ear, and continued to study the fascinating flames. This quietness of demeanour reassured Kirstie, whose hospitality thereupon asserted itself.

“Give the poor thing some buckwheat cakes, Miranda,” she said. “I’m sure she’s come because she’s hungry.”

Miranda preferred to think the visit was due to no such interested motives; but she at once took up a plate of cakes which she had drenched in molasses for the requirements of her own taste. She set the plate on the edge of the table nearest to her visitor, and gently pulled the bear’s snout down toward it. No second invitation was needed. The fire was forgotten. The enchanting smell of buckwheat cakes and molasses was a new one to Kroof’s nostrils, but the taste for it was there, full grown and waiting. Out went her narrow red tongue. The cakes disappeared rather more rapidly than was consistent with good manners: the molasses was deftly licked up, and with a grin of rapture she looked about for more. Just in front of Kirstie stood a heaping dish of the dainties hot from the griddle. With an eager but tentative paw Kroof reached out for them. This was certainly not manners. Kirstie removed the dish beyond her reach, while Miranda firmly pushed the trespassing paw from the table.

“No, Kroof, you shan’t have any more at all, unless you are good!” she admonished, with hortatory finger uplifted.

There are few animals so quick to take a hint as the bear, and Kroof’s wits had grown peculiarly alert during her long intimacy with Miranda. She submitted with instant meekness, and waited, with tongue hanging out, while Miranda prepared her a huge bowl of bread and molasses. When she had eaten this, she investigated everything about the cabin, and finally went to sleep on a mat in the corner of the inner room. Before sundown she got up and wandered off to her lair, being still drowsy with winter sleep.

After this the old bear came daily at noon to the cabin, dined with Kirstie and Miranda, and dozed away the afternoon on her mat in the chosen corner. Kirstie came to regard her as a member of the household. To the cattle and the poultry she paid no attention whatever. In a few days the oxen ceased to lower their horns as she passed; and the cock, Saunders’s equally haughty successor, refrained from the shrill expletives of warning with which he had been wont to herald her approach.

One afternoon, before spring had fairly set in, there came two unwelcome visitors to the cabin. In a lumber-camp some fifteen miles away, on a branch of the Quah-Davic, there had been trouble. Two of the “hands,” surly and mutinous all winter, had at last, by some special brutality, enraged the “boss” and their mates beyond all pardon. Hooted and beaten from the camp, they had started through the woods by the shortest road to the Settlement. Their hearts were black with pent-up fury. About three o’clock in the afternoon, they happened upon the clearing, and demanded something to eat.

Though sullen, and with a kind of menace in their air, their words were civil enough at first, and Kirstie busied herself to supply what seemed to her their just demands. The laws of hospitality are very binding in the backwoods. Miranda, meanwhile, not liking the looks of the strangers, kept silently aloof and scrutinized them.

When Kirstie had set before them a good meal, – hot tea, and hot boiled beans, and eggs, and white bread and butter, – they were disappointed because she gave them no pork, and they were not slow to demand it.

“I’ve got none,” said Kirstie; “we don’t eat pork here. You ought to get along well enough on what’s good enough for Miranda and me.”

For a backwoods house to be without pork, the indispensable, the universal, the lumberman’s staff of life, was something unheard of. They both thought she was keeping back the pork out of meanness.

“You lie!” exclaimed one, a lean, short, swarthy ruffian. The other got up and took a step toward the woman, where she stood, dauntlessly eying them. His scrubby red beard bristled, his massive shoulders hunched themselves ominously toward his big ears.

“You git that pork, and be quick about it!” he commanded, with the addition of such phrases of emphasis as the lumberman uses, but does not use in the presence of women.

“Beast!” exclaimed Kirstie, eyes and cheeks flaming. “Get out of this house.” And she glanced about for a weapon. But in a second the ruffian had seized her. Though stronger than most men, she was no match for him – a noted bully and a cunning master of the tricks of the ring. She was thrown in a second. Miranda, with a scream of rage, snatched up a table knife and darted to her mother’s aid; but the shorter ruffian, now delighted with the game, shouted: “Settle the old woman, Bill. I’ll see to the gal!” and made a grab for Miranda.

It had all happened so suddenly that Kirstie was, for a moment, stunned. Then, realizing the full horror of the situation, a strength as of madness came upon her. She set her teeth into the wrist of her assailant with such fury that he yelled and for a second loosed his hold. In that second, tearing herself half free, she clutched his throat with her long and powerful fingers. It was only an instant’s respite, but it was enough to divert the other scoundrel’s attention from Miranda. With a huge laugh he turned to free his mate from that throttling grip.

His purpose was never fulfilled. Kroof, just at this instant, thrust her nose from the door of the inner room, half awake, and wondering at the disturbance. Her huge bulk was like a nightmare. The swarthy wretch stood for an instant spellbound in amazement. With a savage growl, Kroof launched herself at him, and he, darting around the table, wrenched the door open and fled.

The other miscreant, though well occupied with Kirstie’s mad grip at his throat, had seen, from the corner of his eyes, that black monster emerge like fate and charge upon his comrade. To him, Kroof looked as big as an ox. With a gasping curse he tore himself free; and, hurling Kirstie half across the table, he rushed from the cabin. His panic was lest the monster should return and catch him, like a rat in a pit, where there was no chance of escape.

As a matter of fact, Kroof was just returning, with an angry realization that her foe could run faster than she could. And lo! here was another of the same breed in the very doorway before her. As she confronted him, his eyes nearly started from his head. With a yell he dodged past, nimble as a loon’s neck. Savagely she struck out at him with her punishing paw. Had she caught him, there would have been one rogue the fewer, and blood on the cabin threshold. But she missed, and he went free. He ran wildly over the snow patches in pursuit of his fleeing comrade; while Kroof, all a-bristle with indignation, hurried into the cabin, to be hugged and praised with grateful tears by Kirstie and Miranda.

When the first of the fugitives, the lean and swarthy one, reached the edge of the woods, he paused to look back. There was no one following but his comrade, who came up a moment later and clutched at him, panting heavily. Neither, for a minute or two, had breath for any word but a broken curse. The big, bristly scoundrel called Bill was bleeding at the wrist from Kirstie’s bite, and his throat, purple and puffed, bore witness to the strength of Kirstie’s fingers. The other had got off scot free. The two stared at each other, cowed and discomfited.

“Ever see the likes o’ that?” queried Bill, earnestly.

“Be damned ef ’twan’t the devil himself!” asseverated his companion.

“Oh, hell! ’twere jest a b’ar!” retorted Bill, in a tone of would-be derision. “But bigger’n a steer! I don’t want none of it!”

“B’ar er devil, what’s the odds? Let’s git, says I!” was the response; and simultaneously the two lifted their eyes to observe the sun and get their bearings. But it was not the sun they saw. Their jaws fell. Their hair rose. For a moment they stood rooted to the ground in abject horror.

Right above their heads, crouched close upon the vast up-sloping limb of a hoary pine, lay a panther, looking down upon them with fixed, dilating stare. They saw his claws, protruding, and set firmly into the bark. They saw the backward, snarling curl of his lips as his head reached down toward them over the edge of his perch. For several choking heart-beats the picture bit itself into their coarse brains; then, with a gurgling cry that came as one voice from the two throats, both sprang aside like hares and ran wildly down the trail.

Within a few hours of their arrival at the Settlement, this was the story on all lips, – that Kirstie’s cabin was guarded by familiars, who could take upon themselves at will the form of bear, panther, wolf, or mad bull moose, for the terrorizing of such travellers as might chance to trespass upon that unholy solitude. The Settlement held a few superstitious souls who believed this tale; while the rest pretended to believe it because it gave them something to talk about. No one, in fact, was at all the worse for it, except the ruffian called Bill, who, on one of Young Dave’s rare visits to the Settlement, got into an argument with him on the subject, and incidentally got a licking.

Chapter XI

Miranda and Young Dave

After this the cabin in the clearing ran small risk of marauders. To the most sceptical homespun philosopher in the Settlement it seemed obvious that Kirstie and Miranda had something mysterious about them, and had forsaken their kind for the fellowship of the furtive kin. No one but Old Dave had any relish for a neighbourhood where bears kept guard, and lynxes slily frequented, and caribou bulls of a haughty temper made themselves free of the barnyard. As for Young Dave, unwilling to fall foul of the folk who were so friendly to Kirstie and Miranda, he carried his traps, his woodcraft, and his cunning rifle to a tract more remote from the clearing.

Thus it came that Miranda grew to womanhood with no human companion but her mother. To her mother she stood so close that the two assimilated each other, as it were. Such education as Kirstie possessed, and such culture, narrow but significant, were Miranda’s by absorption. For the rest, the quiet folk of the wood insensibly moulded her, and the great silences, and the wide wonder of the skies at night, and the solemnity of the wind. At seventeen she was a woman, mature beyond her years, but strange, with an elfish or a faun-like strangeness: as if a soul not all human dwelt in her human shape. Silent, wild, unsmiling, her sympathies were not with her own kind, but with the wild and silent folk who know not the sweetness of laughter. Yet she was given to moods of singing mirth, at long intervals; and her tenderness toward all pain, her horror of blood, were things equally alien to the wilderness creatures, her associates. It was doubtless this unbridgable divergence, combining with her sympathy and subtle comprehension, which secured her mysterious ascendency in the forest; for by this time it would never have occurred to her to step aside even for a panther or a bull moose in his fury. Something, somehow, in the air about her, told all the creatures that she was supreme.

In appearance, Miranda was a contrast to her mother, though her colouring was almost the same. Miranda was a little less than middle height, slender, graceful, fine-boned, small of hand and foot, delicate-featured, her skin toned with the clear browns of health and the open air and the matchless cosmetic of the sun. Her abundance of bronze-black hair, shot with flame-glints wheresoever the sunlight struck it, came down low over a broad, low forehead. Her eyes, in which, as we have seen, lay very much of her power over the folk of the wood, were very large and dark. They possessed a singular transparency, akin to the magical charm of the forest shadows. There was something unreal and haunting in this inexplicable clarity of her gaze, something of that mystery which dwells in the reflections of a perfect mirror of water. Her nose, straight and well modelled, was rather large than small, with nostrils alertly sensitive to discern all the wilding savours, the clean, personal scents of the clean-living creatures of the wood, and even those inexpressibly elusive perfume-heralds which, on certain days, come upon the air, forerunning the changes of the seasons. Her mouth was large, but not too large for beauty, neither thin nor full, of a vivid scarlet, mobile and mutable, yet firm, and with the edges of the lips exactly defined. Habitually reposeful and self-controlled in movement, like her mother, her repose suggested that of a bird poised upon the wing, liable at any instant to incalculable celerities; while that of Kirstie was like the calm of a hill with the eternal disrupting fire at its heart. The scarlet ribbon which Miranda the woman, like Miranda the child, wore always about her neck, seemed in her the symbol of an ineradicable strangeness of spirit, while Kirstie’s scarlet kerchief expressed but the passion which burned perennial beneath its wearer’s quietude.

Being in all respects natural and unselfconscious, it is not to be wondered at that Miranda was inconsistent. The truce which she had created about her – the pax Mirandæ– had so long kept her eyes from the hated sight of blood that she had forgotten death, and did not more than half believe in pain. Nevertheless she was still a shaft of doom to the trout in the lake and river. Fishing was a delight to her. It satisfied some fierce instinct inherited from her forefathers, which she never thought to analyze. The musical rushing of the stream; the foam and clamour of the shallow falls; the deep, black, gleaming pools with the roots of larch and hemlock overhanging; the sullen purple and amber of the eddies with their slowly swirling patches of froth, – all these allured her, though with a threat. And then the stealthy casting of the small, baited hook or glittering fly, the tense expectancy, the electrifying tug upon the line, the thrill, the exultation of the landing, and the beauty of the spotted prey, silver and vermilion, on the olive carpet of the moss! It hardly occurred to her that they were breathing, sentient creatures, these fish of the pools. She would doubtless have resented the idea of any kinship between herself and these cold inhabiters of a hostile element. In fact, Miranda was very close to nature, and she could not escape her part in nature’s never ceasing war of opposites.

Late one afternoon in summer Miranda was loitering homeward from the stream with a goodly string of trout. It was a warm day and windless, and the time of year not that which favours the fisherman. But in those cold waters the fish will rise even in July and August, and Miranda’s bait, or Miranda’s home-tied fly, was always a killing lure to them. She carried her catch – one gaping-jawed two-pounder, and a half dozen smaller victims – strung through the crimson gills on a forked branch of alder. Her dark face was flushed; her hair (she never wore a hat) was dishevelled; her eyes were very wide and abstracted, taking in the varied shadows, – the boulders, the markings on the bark of the tree trunks, the occasional flickering moths, and the solemn little brown owl that sat in the cleft of the pine tree, yet seeming to see not these but something within or beyond them.

Suddenly, however, they were arrested by a sight which scattered their abstraction. Their focus seemed to shorten, their expression concentrated to a strained intensity, then lightened to a greyness with anger as she took a hasty step forward, and paused, uncertain for a moment what to do.

Before her was a little open glade, full of sun, secure and inviting. At its farther edge a thick-branched, low beech tree, reaching out from the confusion of trunks and vistas, cast a pleasant differentiated shade. Here in this shade a young man lay sleeping, sprawled carelessly, his head on one arm. He was tall, gaunt, clad in grey homespuns and a well-worn buckskin jacket. His red-brown hair was cut somewhat short, his light yellow moustache, long and silky, looked the lighter by contrast with the ruddy tan of his face. His rifle leaned against the tree near by, while he slept the luxurious sleep of an idle summer afternoon.

But not five paces away crouched an immense panther, flattened to the ground, watching him.

The beast was ready, at the first movement or sign of life, to spring upon the sleeper’s throat. Its tail rigidly outstretched, twitched slightly at the tip. Its great, luminous eyes were so intently fixed upon the anticipated prey that it did not see Miranda’s quiet approach.

To the girl the sleeper seemed something very beautiful, in the impersonal way that a splendid flower, or a tall young tree in the open, or the scarlet-and-pearl of sunrise is beautiful – not a thing as near to herself as the beasts of the wood, whom she knew. But she was filled with strange, protective fury at the thought of peril to this interesting creature. Her hesitation was but for a moment. She knew the ferocity of the panther very well, and trembled lest the sleeper should move, or twitch a muscle. She stepped up close to his side, and fixed the animal’s eyes with her disconcerting gaze.

“Get off!” she ordered sharply, with a gesture of command.

The beast had doubtless a very plentiful ignorance of the English language, but gesture is a universal speech. He understood it quite clearly. He faced her eye, and endured it for some seconds, being minded to dispute its authority. Then his glance shifted, his whole attitude changed. He rose from his crouching posture, his tail drooped, his tension relaxed, he looked back over his shoulder, then turned and padded furtively away. Just as he was leaving, the man awoke with a start, sat up, gave one wondering look at Miranda, caught sight of the panther’s retreating form, and reached for his rifle.

Quick as light, Miranda intervened. Stepping between his hand and its purpose, she flamed out against him with sudden anger.

“How dare you – go to shoot him!” she cried, her voice trembling.

He had sprung to his feet, and was staring at her flushed face with a mixture of admiration and bewilderment.

“But he was goin’ to jump onto me!” he protested.

“Well,” rejoined Miranda, curtly, “he didn’t! And you’ve got no call to shoot him!”

“Why didn’t he?” asked the young man.

“I drove him off. If I’d thought you’d shoot him, I’d have let him jump onto you,” was the cool reply.

“Why didn’t he jump onto you?” asked the stranger, his keen grey eyes lighting up as if he began to understand the situation.

“Because he durs’n’t, – and he wouldn’t want to, neither!”

“I calculate,” said the stranger, holding out his hand, while a smile softened the thoughtful severity of his face, “that you must be little Mirandy.”

“My name is Miranda,” she answered, ignoring the outstretched hand; “but I’m sure I don’t know who you are, coming here into my woods to kill my friends.”

“I wouldn’t hurt a hair of ’em!” he asserted, with a mingling of fervour and amusement. “But ain’t I one o’ your friends, too, Mirandy? I used to be, anyway.”

He took a step nearer, still holding out a pleading hand. Miranda drew back, and put her hands behind her. “I don’t know you,” she persisted, but now with something of an air of wilfulness rather than of hostility. Old memories had begun to stir in forgotten chambers of her brain.

“You used to be friends with Young Dave,” he said, in an eager half whisper. Miranda’s beauty and the strangeness of it were getting into his long-untroubled blood.

The girl at once put out her hand with a frank kindness. “Oh, I remember!” she said. “You’ve been a long time forgetting us, haven’t you? But never mind. Come along with me to the clearing, and see mother, and get some supper.”

Dave flushed with pleasure at the invitation.

“Thank ye kindly, Mirandy, I reckon I will,” said he; and stepping to one side he picked up his rifle. But at the sight of the weapon Miranda’s new friendliness froze up, and a resentful gleam came into her great eyes.

“Let me heft it,” she demanded abruptly, holding out an imperative hand.

Dave gave it up at once, with a deprecating air, though a ghost of a smile flickered under the long, yellow droop of his moustache.

Miranda had no interest in the weight or balance of the execrated weapon: possession of it was all her purpose.

“I’ll carry it,” she remarked abruptly. “You take these,” and handing over to him the string of trout, she turned to the trail.

Dave followed, now at her side, now dropping respectfully behind, as the exigencies of the way required. Nothing was said for some time. The girl’s instinctive interest in the man whom she had so opportunely protected was now quenched in antagonism, as she thought upon his murderous calling. With sharp resentment she imagined him nursing an indulgent contempt for her friendship with the furry and furtive creatures. She burned with retrospective compassion for all the beasts which had fallen to his bullets, or his blind and brutal traps. A trap was, in her eyes, the unpardonable horror. Had she not once, when a small girl, seen a lynx – perhaps it was Ganner himself – caught by the hind quarters in a dead-fall? The beast was not quite dead – it had been for days dying; its eyes were dulled, yet widely staring, and its tongue, black and swollen, stuck out between its grinning jaws. She had seen at once that the case was past relief; and she would have ended the torture had her little hands known how to kill. But helpless and anguished as she was, she had fled from the spot, and shudderingly cried her eyes out for an hour. Then it had come over her with a wrenching of remorse that the dreadful tongue craved water; and she had flown back with a tin cup of the assuaging fluid, only to find the animal just dead. The pain of thinking that she might have eased its last torments, and had not, bit the whole scene ineffaceably into her heart; and now, with this splendid trapper, the kind friend of her babyhood, walking at her side, the picture and its pangs returned with a horrible incongruity. But what most of all hardened her heart against the man was a sense of threat which his atmosphere conveyed to her, – a menace, in some vague way, to her whole system of life, her sympathies, her contentments, her calm.