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THE HEART 
 OF LITTLE SHIKARA 
 
fig EMfimt Hlaraijall 
 
 The Voice of 
 
 the Pack 
 
 The Strength 
 
 of the Pines 
 
 The Snowshoe 
 
 Trail 
 
 Shepherds of 
 
 the Wild 
 
 The Sky Line 
 
 of Spruce 
 
THE HEART 
 OF LITTLE SHIKARA 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 EDISON MARSHALL 
 ff 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1922 
 
Copyright, 1922, 
 By Little, Brown, and Company. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published October, 1922 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Heart of Little Shikara i 
 
 Never Kill a Porcupine 38 
 
 Jungle Justice 61 
 
 Shag of the Packs 86 
 
 The Son of the Wild Things 125 
 
 Furs 156 
 
 Little Death 178 
 
 The Elephant Remembers 202 
 
 The Serpent City 235 
 
 Brother Bill the Elk 255 
 
 M18G72 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 
 and Other Stones 
 
 THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA 
 
 If it hadn't been for a purple moon that came peering 
 up above the dark jungle just at nightfall, it would have 
 been impossible to tell that Little Shikara was at his watch. 
 He was really just the color of the shadows — a rather pleas- 
 ant brown — he was very little indeed, and besides, he was 
 standing very, very still. If he was trembling at all, from 
 anticipation and excitement, it was no more than Nahar the 
 tiger trembles as he crouches in ambush. But the moon did 
 show him — peering down through the leaf clusters of the 
 heavy vines — and shone very softly in his wide-open dark 
 eyes. 
 
 And it was a purple moon, no other color that man could 
 name. It looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted 
 very badly by a clumsy stagehand. The jungle moon quite 
 often has that peculiar purplish tint, most travelers know, 
 but few of them indeed ever try to tell what causes it. 
 This particular moon probed down here and there between 
 the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle — just now waking 
 — into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on a hard-packed 
 elephant trail that wound away into the thickets, and always 
 
2 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 came back to shine on the coal-black Oriental eyes of the 
 little boy beside the village gate. It showed him standing 
 very straight and just as tall as his small stature would per- 
 mit, .ind looked oddly silvery and strange on his long, dark 
 hair. Little Shikara, son of Khoda Dunnoo, was waiting for 
 the return of a certain idol and demigod who was even now 
 riding home in his howdah from the tiger hunt. 
 
 Others of the villagers would be down to meet Warwick 
 Sahib as soon as they heard the shouts of his beaters, but 
 Little Shikara had been waiting almost an hour. Likely if 
 they had known about it, they would have commented on his 
 badness, because he was notoriously bad, if indeed — as the 
 villagers told each other — he was not actually cursed with 
 evil spirits. 
 
 In the first place, he was almost valueless as a herder of 
 buffalo. Three times, when he had been sent with the other 
 boys to watch the herds in their wallows, he had left his post 
 and crept away into the fringe of jungle on what was un- 
 questionably some mission of witchcraft. For small naked 
 brown boys, as a rule, do not go alone and unarmed into the 
 thick bamboos. Too many things can happen to prevent 
 them ever coming out again ; too many brown silent ribbons 
 crawl in the grass, or too many yellow, striped creatures, no 
 less lithe, lurk in the thickets. But the strangest thing of all 
 — and the surest sign of witchcraft — was that he had always 
 come safely out again, yet with never any satisfactory ex- 
 planations as to why he had gone. He had always looked 
 some way very joyful and tremulous, and perhaps even pale, 
 if from the nature of things a brown boy ever can look pale. 
 But it was the kind of paleness that one has after a par- 
 ticularly exquisite experience. It was not the dumb, teeth- 
 chattering paleness of fear. 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 3 
 
 "I saw the sergeant of the jungle," Little Shikara said 
 after one of these excursions. And this made no sense at all. 
 
 "There are none of the king's soldiers here," the brown 
 village folk replied to him. "Either thou liest to us, or thine 
 eyes lied to thee. And didst thou also see the chevron that 
 told his rank?" 
 
 "That was the way I knew him. It was the black bear, 
 and he wore the pale chevron low on his throat." 
 
 This was Little Shikara all over. Of course he referred 
 to the black Himalayan bear which all men know wears a 
 yellowish patch, of chevron shape, just in front of his fore 
 legs; but why he should call him a jungle-sergeant was quite 
 beyond the wit of the village folk to say. Their imagination 
 did not run in that direction. It never even occurred to them 
 that Little Shikara might be a born jungle creature, ex- 
 patriated by the accident of birth, — one of that free, strange 
 breed that can never find peace in the villages of men. 
 
 "But remember the name we gave him," his mother would 
 say. "Perhaps he is only living up to his name." 
 
 For there are certain native hunters in India that are 
 known, far and wide, as the Shikaris; and possibly she meant 
 in her tolerance that her little son was merely a born hunts- 
 man. But in reality Little Shikara was not named for these 
 men at all. Rather it was for a certain fleet-winged little 
 hawk, a hunter of sparrows, that is one of the most free 
 spirits in all the jungle. 
 
 And it was almost like taking part in some great hunt 
 himself — to be waiting at the gate for the return of Warwick 
 Sahib. Even now, the elephant came striding out of the 
 shadows ; and Little Shikara could see the trophy. The hunt 
 had indeed been successful, and the boy's glowing eyes beheld 
 — even in the shadows — the largest, most beautiful tiger-skin 
 
4 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 he had ever seen. It was the great Nahar, the royal tiger, 
 who had killed one hundred cattle from near-by fields. 
 
 Warwick Sahib rode in his howdah; and he did not seem 
 to see the village people that came out to meet him. In 
 truth, he seemed half-asleep, his muscles limp, his gray 
 eyes full of thoughts. He made no answer to the triumph- 
 ant shouts of the village folk. Little Shikara glanced once 
 at the lean bronze face, the limp, white, thin hands, and 
 something like a shiver of ecstasy went clear to his ten toes. 
 For like many other small boys, all over the broad world, 
 he was a hero-worshiper to the last hair of his head; and 
 this quiet man on the elephant was to him beyond all meas- 
 ure the most wonderful living creature on the earth. 
 
 He didn't cry out, as the others did. He simply stood 
 in mute worship, his little body tingling with glory. War- 
 wick Sahib had looked up now, and his slow eyes were 
 sweeping the line of brown faces. But still he did not 
 seem to see them. And then — wonder of wonders — his eyes 
 rested full on the eyes of his little worshiper beside the gate. 
 
 But it was quite the way of Warwick Sahib to sweep 
 his gray, tired-out eyes over a scene and seemingly perceive 
 nothing ; yet in reality absorb every detail with the accuracy 
 of a photographic plate. And his seeming indifference was 
 not a pose with him, either. He was just a great sportsman 
 who was also an English gentleman, and he had learned 
 certain lessons of impassiveness from the wild. Only one of 
 the brown faces he beheld was worth a lingering glance. 
 And when he met that one his eyes halted in their sweeping 
 survey, — and Warwick Sahib smiled. 
 
 That face was the brown, eager visage of Little Shikara. 
 And the blood of the boy flowed to the skin, and he glowed 
 red all over through the brown. 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 5 
 
 It was only the faintest of quiet, tolerant smiles; but it 
 meant more to him than almost any kind of an honor could 
 have meant to the prematurely gray man in the howdah. 
 The latter passed on to his estate, and some of the villagers 
 went back to their women and their thatch huts. But 
 still little Shikara stood motionless, and it wasn't until the 
 thought suddenly came to him that possibly the beaters had 
 already gathered and were telling the story of the kill 
 that with startling suddenness he raced back through the 
 gates to the village. 
 
 Yes, the beaters had assembled in a circle under a tree, 
 and most of the villagers had gathered to hear the story. He 
 slipped in among them and listened with both outstanding 
 little ears. Warwick Sahib had dismounted from his 
 elephant as usual, the beaters said, and with but one at- 
 tendant had advanced up the bed of a dry creek. This was 
 quite like Warwick Sahib, and Little Shikara felt himself 
 tingling again. Other hunters, particularly many of the 
 rich sahibs from across the sea, shot their tigers from the 
 security of the howdah; but this wasn't Warwick's way of 
 doing. The male tiger had risen snarling from his lair 
 and had been felled at the first shot. 
 
 Most of the villagers had supposed that the story would 
 end at this point. Warwick Sahib's tiger hunts were usually 
 just such simple and expeditious affairs. The gun would 
 lift to his shoulder, the quiet eyes would glance along the 
 barrel, and the tiger, whether charging or standing still, 
 would speedily die. But to-day there had been a curious 
 epilogue. Just as the beaters had started toward the fallen 
 animal, and the white Heaven-born 's cigaret-case was open 
 in his hand, Nahara, Nahar's great, tawny mate, had sud- 
 denly sprung forth from the bamboo thickets. 
 
6 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 She drove straight at the nearest of the beaters. There 
 was no time whatever for Warwick to take aim. His rifle 
 leaped, like a live thing, in his arms, but not one of 
 the horrified beaters had seen his eyes lower to the sights. 
 Yet the bullet went home; they could tell by the way the 
 tiger flashed to her breast in the grass. 
 
 Yet she was only wounded. One of the beaters, starting, 
 had permitted a bough of a tree to whip Warwick in the 
 face, and the blow had disturbed what little aim he had. 
 It was almost a miracle that he had hit the great cat at 
 all. At once the thickets had closed around her, and the 
 beaters had been unable to drive her forth again. 
 
 The circle was silent thereafter. They seemed to be 
 waiting for Khusru, one of the head men of the village, 
 to give his opinion. He knew more about the wild animals 
 than any mature native in the assembly, and his com- 
 ments on the hunting stories were usually worth hearing. 
 
 "We will not be in the honored service of the Protector 
 of the Poor at this time a year from now," he said. 
 
 They all waited tensely. Shikara shivered. "Speak, 
 Khusru," they urged him. 
 
 "Warwick Sahib will go again to the jungles — and 
 Nahara will be waiting. She owes two debts. One is the 
 killing of her mate — and ye know that these two tigers have 
 been long and faithful mates. Do ye think she will let that 
 debt go unpaid? She will also avenge her own wound." 
 
 "Perhaps she will die of bleeding," one of the others 
 suggested. 
 
 "Nay, or ye would have found her this afternoon. Ye 
 know that it is the wounded tiger that is most to be feared. 
 One day, and he will go forth in pursuit of her again; and 
 then ye will not see him riding back so grandly on his 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 7 
 
 elephant. Perhaps she will come here, to carry away our 
 children." 
 
 Again Shikara tingled, hoping that Nahara would at 
 least come close enough to cause excitement. And that 
 night, too happy to keep silent, he told his mother of 
 Warwick Sahib's smile. "And some time I — I, thine own 
 son," he said, as sleepiness came upon him, "will be a 
 killer of tigers, even as Warwick Sahib." 
 
 "Little sparrow-hawk," his mother laughed at him. "Lit- 
 tle one of mighty words, only the great sahibs that come 
 from afar, and Warwick Sahib himself may hunt the tiger. 
 So how canst thou, little worthless?" 
 
 "I will soon be grown," he persisted, "and I — I too — 
 will sometime return with such a tiger skin as the great 
 Heaven-born brought this afternoon." Little Shikara was 
 very sleepy, and he was telling his dreams much more frankly 
 than was his wont. "And the village folk will come out 
 to meet me with shoutings, and I will tell them of the 
 shot — in the circle under the tree." 
 
 "And where, little hawk, wilt thou procure thine ele- 
 phants, and such rupees as are needed?" 
 
 "Warwick Sahib shoots from the ground — and so will 
 I. And sometimes he goes forth with only one attendant 
 — and I will not need even one. And who can say — per- 
 haps he will find me even a bolder man than Gunga Singhai ; 
 and he will take me in his place on the hunts in the jungles." 
 
 For Gunga Singhai was Warwick Sahib's own personal 
 attendant and gun carrier, the native that the Protector 
 of the Poor could trust in the tightest places. So it was 
 only to be expected that Little Shikara's mother should 
 laugh at him. The idea of her son being an attendant 
 of Warwick Sahib, not to mention a hunter of tigers, was 
 
8 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 only a tale to tell her husband when the boy's bright eyes 
 were closed in sleep. 
 
 "Nay, little man," she told him. "Would I want thee 
 torn to pieces in Nahara's claws ? Would I want thee smell- 
 ing of the jungle again, as thou didst after chasing the water- 
 buck through the bamboos? Nay — thou wilt be a herds- 
 man, like thy father — and perhaps gather many rupees." 
 
 But Little Shikara did not want to think of rupees. Even 
 now, as sleep came to him, his childish spirit had left 
 the circle of thatch roofs and had gone on tremulous ex- 
 peditions into the jungle. Far away, the trumpet call of 
 a wild tusker trembled through the moist, hot night; and 
 great bell-shaped flowers made the air pungent and heavy 
 with perfume. A tigress skulked somewhere in a thicket 
 licking an injured leg with her rough tongue, pausing to 
 listen to every sound the night gave forth. Little Shikara 
 whispered in his sleep. 
 
 A half mile distant, in his richly furnished bungalow, 
 Warwick Sahib dozed over his after-dinner cigar. He was 
 in evening clothes, and crystal and silver glittered on 
 his board. But his gray eyes were h alf -closed ; and the 
 gleam from his plate could not pass the long, dark lashes. 
 For his spirit was far distant too, on the jungle traite 
 with that of Little Shikara, 
 
 II 
 
 One sunlit morning, perhaps a month after the skin of 
 Nahar was brought in from the jungle, Warwick Sahib's 
 mail was late. It was an unheard-of thing. Always be- 
 fore, just as the clock struck eight, he would hear the cheer- 
 ful tinkle of the postman's bells. At first he considered 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 9 
 
 complaining; but as morning drew to early afternoon, he 
 began to believe that investigation would be the wiser course. 
 
 The postman's route carried him along an old elephant 
 trail through a patch of thick jungle beside one of the 
 tributaries of the Manipur. When natives went out to 
 look, he was neither on the path nor drowned in the creek, 
 nor yet in his thatched hut at the other end of his route. The 
 truth was that this particular postman's bells would never 
 be heard by human ears again. And there was enough 
 evidence in the wet mold of the trail to know what had 
 occurred. 
 
 That night the circle under the tree was silent and 
 shivering. "Who is next?" they asked of one another. 
 The jungle night came down, breathless and mysterious, and 
 now and then a twig was cracked by a heavy foot at 
 the edge of the thickets. In Warwick's house, the great 
 Protector oi the Poor took his rifles from their cases and 
 fitted them together. 
 
 "To-morrow," he told Gunga Singhai, "we will settle 
 for that postman's death." 
 
 Singhai breathed deeply but said nothing. Perhaps his 
 dark eyes brightened. The tiger hunts were nearly as 
 great a delight to him as they were to Warwick himself. 
 
 But while Nahara, lame from Warwick's bullet, could 
 no longer overtake cattle, she did with great skilfulness 
 avoid the onrush of the beaters. Again Little Shikara 
 waited at the village gate for his hero to return; but the 
 beaters walked silently to-night. Nor were there any tales 
 to be told under the tree. 
 
 Nahara, a fairly respectable cattle killer before, had be- 
 come in a single night one of the worst terrors of India. 
 Of course she was still a coward, but she had learned, 
 
10 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 by virtue of a chance meeting with a postman on a trail 
 after a week of heart-devouring starvation, two or three 
 extremely portentous lessons. One of them was that not 
 even the little deer, drinking beside the Manipur, died 
 half so easily as these tall, forked forms of which she had 
 previously been so afraid. She found out also that they 
 could neither run swiftly nor walk silently, and they could 
 be approached easily even by a tiger that cracked a twig 
 with every step. It simplified the problem of living im- 
 mensely; and just as any other feline would have done, 
 she took the line of least resistance. If there had been 
 plenty of carrion in the jungle, Nahara might never have 
 hunted men. But the kites and the jackals looked after 
 the carrion; and they were much swifter and keener-eyed 
 than a lame tiger. 
 
 She knew enough not to confine herself to one village; 
 and it is rather hard to explain how any lower creature, 
 that obviously can not reason, could have possessed this 
 knowledge. Perhaps it was because she had learned that 
 a determined hunt, with many beaters and men on ele- 
 phants, invariably followed her killings. It was always 
 well to travel just as far as possible from the scene. She 
 found out also that, just as a doe is easier felled than a 
 horned buck, certain of this new kind of game were more 
 easily taken than the others. Sometimes children played 
 at the door of their huts, and sometimes old men were 
 afflicted with such maladies that they could not flee at all. 
 All these things Nahara learned; and in learning them she 
 caused a certain civil office of the British Empire to put 
 an exceedingly large price on her head. 
 
 Gradually the fact dawned on her that, unlike the deer 
 and the buffalo, this new game was more easily hunted 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara n 
 
 in the daylight, particularly in that tired-out, careless twi- 
 light hour when the herders and the plantation hands came 
 in from their work. At night the village folk kept in their 
 huts, and such wood-cutters and gipsies as slept without 
 wakened every hour to tend their fires. Nahara was deathly 
 afraid of fire. Night after night she would creep round 
 and round a gipsy camp, her eyes like two pale blue moons 
 in the darkness, and would never dare attack. 
 
 And because she was taking her living in a manner for- 
 bidden by the laws of the jungle, the glory and beauty 
 of her youth quickly departed from her. There are no 
 prisons for those that break the jungle laws, no courts 
 and no appointed officers; but because these are laws that 
 go down to the roots of life, punishment is always swift 
 and inevitable. "Thou shalt not kill men," is the first 
 law of the wild creatures; and every one knows that any 
 animal or breed of animals that breaks this law has sooner 
 or later been hunted down and slain, just like any other 
 murderer. The mange came upon her, and she lost flesh, 
 and certain of her teeth began to come out. She was no 
 longer the beautiful female of her species, to be sung to 
 by the weaver-birds as she passed beneath. She was a 
 hag and a vampire, hatred of whom lay deep in every 
 human heart in her hunting range. 
 
 Often the hunting was poor, and sometimes she went 
 many days in a stretch without making a single kill. And 
 in all beasts, high and low, this is the last step to the 
 worst degeneracy of all. It instills a curious, terrible kind 
 of blood-lust — to kill, not once, but as many times as pos- 
 sible in the same hunt; to be content not with one death, 
 but to slay and slay until the whole herd is destroyed. 
 It is the instinct that makes a little weasel kill all the 
 
12 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 chickens in a coop, when one was all it could possibly 
 carry away, and that will cause a wolf to leap from sheep 
 to sheep in a fold until every one is dead. Nahara didn't 
 get a chance to kill every day; so when the opportunity did 
 come, like a certain pitiable kind of human hunter who 
 comes from afar to hunt small game, she killed as many 
 times as she could in quick succession. And the British 
 Empire raised the price on her head. 
 
 One afternoon found her within a half-mile of War- 
 wick's bungalow, and for five days she had gone without 
 food. One would not have thought of her as a royal tigress, 
 the queen of the felines and one of the most beautiful of 
 all living things. And since she was still tawny and grace- 
 ful, it would be hard to understand why she no longer 
 gave the impression of beauty. It was simply gone, as a 
 flame goes, and her queenliness was wholly departed too. 
 In some vague way she had become a poisonous, a ghastly 
 thing, to be named with such outcasts as the jackals or 
 hyenas. 
 
 Excessive hungeT, in most of the flesh-eating animals, is 
 really a first cousin to madness. It brings bad dreams 
 and visions, and, worst of all, it induces an insubordina- 
 tion to all the forest laws of man and beast. A well-fed 
 wolf pack will run in stark panic from a human being; 
 but even the wisest of mountaineers do not care to meet 
 the same gray band in the starving times of winter. Starva- 
 tion brings recklessness, a desperate frenzied courage that 
 is likely to upset all of one's preconceived notions as to the 
 behavior of animals. It also brings, so that all men may 
 be aware of its presence, a peculiar lurid glow to the balls 
 of the eyes. 
 
 In fact, the two pale circles of fire were the most notice- 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 13 
 
 able characteristics of the long, tawny cat that crept through 
 the bamboos. Except for them, she would hardly have been 
 discernible at all. The yellow grass made a perfect back- 
 ground, her black stripes looked like the streaks of shadow 
 between the stalks of bamboo, and for one that is lame she 
 crept with an astounding silence. One couldn't have be- 
 lieved that such a great creature could lie so close to the 
 earth and be so utterly invisible in the low thickets. 
 
 A little peninsula of dwarf bamboos and tall jungle grass 
 extended out into the pasture before the village and Nahara 
 crept out clear to its point. She didn't seem to be moving. 
 One couldn't catch the stir and draw of muscles. And 
 yet she slowly glided to the end; then began her wait: Her 
 head sunk low, her body grew tense, her tail whipped softly 
 back and forth, with as easy a motion as the swaying of 
 a serpent. The light flamed and died and flamed and died 
 again in her pale eyes. 
 
 Soon a villager, who had been working in Warwick's 
 fields, came trotting in Oriental fashion across the meadow. 
 His eyes were only human, and he did not see the tawny 
 shape in the tall grass. If any one had told him that a 
 full-grown tigress could have crept to such a place and 
 still remained invisible, he would have laughed. He was 
 going to his thatch hut, to brown wife and babies, and it 
 was no wonder that he trotted swiftly. The muscles of 
 the great cat bunched, and now the whipping tail began 
 to have a little vertical motion that is the final warning 
 of a spring. 
 
 The man was already in leaping range; but the tiger 
 had learned, in many experiences, always to make sure. Still 
 she crouched, a single instant in which the trotting native 
 
14 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 came two paces nearer. Then the man drew up with a 
 gasp of fright. 
 
 For just as the clear outlines of an object that has long 
 been concealed in a maze of light and shadow will often 
 leap, with sudden vividness, to the eyes, the native suddenly 
 perceived the tiger. 
 
 He caught the whole dread picture: the crouching form, 
 the terrible blue lights of the eyes, the whipping tail. The 
 gasp he uttered from his closing throat seemed to act like 
 the fall of a firing-pin against a shell on the bunched 
 muscles of the animal; and she left her covert in a streak 
 of tawny light. 
 
 But Nahara's leaps had never been quite accurate since 
 she had been wounded by Warwick's bullet, months before. 
 They were usually straight enough for the general pur- 
 poses of hunting, but they missed by a long way the 
 "theoretical center of impact" of which artillery officers 
 speak. Her lame paw always seems to disturb her balance. 
 By remembering it, she could usually partly overcome the 
 disadvantage; but to-day, in the madness of her hunger, 
 she had been unable to remember anything except the ter- 
 rible rapture of killing. This circumstance alone, however, 
 would not have saved the native's life. Even though her 
 fangs missed his throat, the power of the blow and her 
 rending talons would have certainly snatched away his life 
 as a storm snatches a leaf. But there was one other de- 
 termining factor. The Burman had seen the tiger just 
 before she leaped; and although there had been no time 
 for conscious thought, his guardian reflexes had flung him 
 to one side in a single frenzied effort to miss the full force 
 of the spring. 
 
 The result of both these things was that he received 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 15 
 
 only an awkward, sprawling blow from the animal's shoul- 
 der. Of course he was hurled to the ground ; for no human 
 body in the world is built to withstand the ton or so of 
 shocking power of a three-hundred-pound cat leaping through 
 the air. The tigress sprawled down also, and because she 
 lighted on her wounded paw, she squealed with pain. It 
 was possibly three seconds before she had forgotten the 
 stabbing pain in her paw and had gathered herself to spring 
 on the unconscious form of the native. And that three 
 seconds gave Warwick Sahib, sitting at the window of his 
 study, an opportunity to seize his rifle and fire. 
 
 Warwick knew tigers, and he had kept the rifle always 
 Teady for just such a need as this. The distance was nearly 
 five hundred yards, and the bullet went wide of its mark. 
 Nevertheless, it saved the native's life. The great cat 
 remembered this same far-off explosion from another day, in 
 a dry creek-bed of months before, and the sing of the bullet 
 was a remembered thing too. Although it would speedily 
 return to her, her courage fled, and she turned and raced 
 into the bamboos. 
 
 In an instant, Warwick was on his great veranda, call- 
 ing his beaters. Gunga Singhai, his faithful gun carrier, 
 slipped shells into the magazine of his master's high-calibered 
 close-range tiger rifle. "The elephant, Sahib?" he asked 
 swiftly. 
 
 "Nay, this will be on foot. Make the beaters circle about 
 the fringe of bamboos. Thou and I will cross the eastern 
 fields and shoot at her as she breaks through." 
 
 But there was really no time to plan a complete cam- 
 paign. Even now, the first gray of twilight was blurring 
 the sharp outlines of the jungle, and the soft jungle night 
 was hovering, ready to descend. Warwick's plan was to 
 
16 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 cut through to a certain little creek that flowed into the 
 river and with Singhai to continue on to the edge of the 
 bamboos that overlooked a wide field. The beaters would 
 prevent the tigress from turning back beyond the village, 
 and it was at least possible that he would get a shot 
 at her as she burst from the jungle and crossed the field 
 to the heavier thickets beyond. 
 
 "Warwick Sahib walks into the teeth of his enemy," 
 Khusru, the hunter, told a little group that watched from 
 the village gate. "Nahara will collect her debts." 
 
 A little brown boy shivered at his words and wondered 
 if the beaters would turn and kick him, as they had always 
 done before, if he should attempt to follow them. It was 
 the tiger hunt, in view of his own village, and he sat down 
 tremulous with rapture in the grass to watch. It was almost 
 as if his dream — that he himself should be a hunter of tigers 
 — was coming true. He wondered why the beaters seemed 
 to move so slowly and with so little heart. 
 
 He would have known if he could have looked into their 
 eyes. Each black pupil was framed with white. Human 
 hearts grow shaken and bloodless from such sights as this 
 they had just seen, and only the heart of a jungle creature — 
 the heart of the eagle that the jungle gods, by some unheard- 
 of fortune, had put in the breast of Little Shikara — could 
 prevail against them. Besides, the superstitious Burmans 
 thought that Warwick was walking straight to his death, 
 that the time had come for Nahara to collect her debts. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Warwick Sahib and Singhai disappeared at once into 
 the fringe of jungle, and silence immediately fell upon them. 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 17 
 
 The cries of the beaters at once seemed curiously dim. It 
 was as if no sound could live in the great silences under 
 the arching trees. Soon it was as if they were alone. 
 
 They walked side by side, Warwick with his rifle held 
 ready. He had no false ideas in regard to this tiger hunt. 
 He knew that his prey was desperate with hunger, that she 
 had many old debts to pay, and that she would charge 
 on sight. 
 
 The self-rage that is felt on missing some particularly 
 fortunate chance is not confined to human beings alone. 
 There is an old saying in the forest that a feline that has 
 missed his stroke is like a jackal in dog days, and that 
 means that it is not safe to be anywhere in the region 
 with him. He simply goes rabid and is quite likely to 
 leap at the first living thing that stirs. Warwick knew 
 that Nahara had just been cheated out of her kill and some 
 one in the jungle would pay for it. 
 
 The gaudy birds that looked down from the tree branches 
 could scarcely recognize this prematurely gray man as a 
 hunter. He walked rather quietly, yet with no conscious 
 effort toward stealth. The rifle rested easily in his arms, 
 his gray eyes were quiet and thoughtful as always. Singu- 
 larly, his splendid features were quite in repose. The 
 Burman, however, had more of the outer signs of alert- 
 ness; and yet there was none of the blind terror upon him 
 that marked the beaters. 
 
 'Where are the men?" Warwick asked quietly. "It is 
 strange that we do not hear them shouting.'* 
 
 "They are afraid, Sahib," Singhai replied. "The forest 
 pigs have left us to do our own hunting." 
 
 Warwick corrected him with a smile. "Forest pigs are 
 
18 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 brave enough," he answered. "They are sheep — just sheep 
 — sheep of the plains." 
 
 The broad trail divided, like a three-tined candlestick, 
 into narrow trails. Warwick halted beside the center of the 
 three that led to the creek they were obliged to cross. Just 
 for an instant he stood watching, gazing into the deep-blue 
 dusk of the deeper jungle. Twilight was falling softly. 
 The trails soon vanished into shadow, patches of deep 
 gloom, relieved here and there by a bright leaf that reflected 
 the last twilight rays. A living creature coughed and 
 rustled away in the thickets beside him. 
 
 "There is little use of going on," he said. "It is grow- 
 ing too dark. But there will be killings before the dawn 
 if we don't get her first." 
 
 The servant stood still, waiting. It was not his place 
 to advise his master. 
 
 "If we leave her, she'll come again before the dawn. 
 Many of the herders haven't returned — she'll get one of 
 them sure. At least we may cross the creek and get a 
 view of the great fields. She is certain to cross them if 
 she has heard the beaters." 
 
 In utter silence they went on. One hundred yards far- 
 ther they came to the creek, and both strode in together 
 to ford. 
 
 The water was only knee-deep, but Warwick's boots 
 sank three inches in the mud of the bottom. And at that 
 instant the gods of the jungle, always waiting with drawn 
 scimitar for the unsuspecting, turned against them. 
 
 Singhai suddenly splashed down into the water, on his 
 hands and knees. He did not cry out. If he made any 
 sound at all, it was just a shivering gasp that the splash 
 of water wholly obscured. But the thing that brought home 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 19 
 
 the truth to Warwick was the pain that flashed, vivid 
 as lightning, across his dark face; and the horror of death 
 that left its shadow. Something churned and writhed in 
 the mud; and then Warwick fired. 
 
 Both of them had forgotten Mugger, the crocodile, that 
 so loves to wait in the mud of a ford. He had seized 
 Singhai's foot, and had already snatched him down into 
 the water when Warwick fired. No living flesh can with- 
 stand the terrible, rending shock of a high-powered sporting 
 rifle at close range. Mugger had plates of armor, but even 
 these could not have availed against it if he had been ex- 
 posed to the fire. As it was, several inches of water stood 
 between, a more effective armor than a two-inch steel plate 
 on a battleship. Of course the shock carried through, a 
 smashing blow that caused the reptile to release his hold 
 on Singhai's leg; but before the native could get to his 
 feet he had struck again. The next instant both men were 
 fighting for their lives. 
 
 They fought with their hands, and Warwick fought 
 with his rifle, and the native slashed again and again with 
 the long knife that he carried at his belt. To a casual 
 glance, a crocodile is wholly incapable of quick action. 
 These two found him a slashing, darting, wolf-like 
 thing, lunging with astounding speed through the muddied 
 water, knocking them from their feet and striking at them 
 as they fell. 
 
 The reptile was only half-grown, but in the water they 
 had none of the usual advantages that man has over the 
 beasts with which he does battle. Warwick could not find 
 a target for his rifle. But even human bodies, usually so 
 weak, find themselves possessed of an amazing reserve 
 strength and agility in the moment of need. These men 
 
20 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 realized perfectly that their lives were the stakes for which 
 they fought, and they gave every ounce of strength and 
 energy they had. Their aim was to hold the mugger off 
 until they could reach the shore. 
 
 At last, by a lucky stroke, Singhai's knife blinded one 
 of the lurid, reptile eyes. He was prone in the water when 
 he administered it, and it went home just as the savage 
 teeth were snapping at his throat. For an instant the great 
 reptile flopped in an impotent half-circle, partly reared 
 out of the water. It gave Warwick a chance to shoot, a 
 single instant in which the rifle seemed to whirl about 
 in his arms, drive to his shoulder, and blaze in the deepen- 
 ing twilight. And the shot went true. It pierced the 
 mugger from beneath, tearing upward through the brain. 
 And then the agitated waters of the ford slowly grew 
 quiet. 
 
 The last echo of the report was dying when Singhai 
 stretched his bleeding arms about Warwick's body, caught 
 up the rifle and dragged them forty feet up on the shore. 
 It was an effort that cost the last of his strength. And 
 as the stars popped out of the sky, one by one, through the 
 gray of dusk the two men lay silent, side by side, on the 
 grassy bank. 
 
 Warwick was the first to regain consciousness. At first 
 he didn't understand the lashing pain in his wrists, the 
 strange numbness in one of his legs, the darkness with the 
 great white Indian stars shining through. Then he re- 
 membered. And he tried to stretch his arm to the prone 
 form beside him. 
 
 The attempt was an absolute failure. The cool brain 
 dispatched the message; it flew along the telegraph wires 
 of the nerves, but the muscles refused to react. He re- 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 21 
 
 membered that the teeth of the mugger had met in one 
 of the muscles of his upper arm, but before unconsciousness 
 had come upon him he had been able to lift the gun to 
 shoot. Possibly infection from the bite had in some manner 
 temporarily paralyzed the arm. He turned, wracked with 
 pain, on his side and lifted his left arm. In doing so his 
 hand crossed before his eyes — and then he smiled wanly in 
 the darkness. 
 
 It was quite like Warwick, sportsman and English gentle- 
 man, to smile at a time like this. Even in the gray dark- 
 ness of the jungle night he could see the hand quite plainly. 
 It no longer looked slim and white. And he remembered 
 that the mugger had caught his fingers in one of its last 
 rushes. 
 
 He paused only for one glance at the mutilated member. 
 He knew that his first work was to see how Singhai had 
 fared. In that glance he was boundlessly relieved to see 
 that the hand could unquestionably be saved. The fingers 
 were torn, yet their bones did not seem to be severed. Tem- 
 porarily at least, however, the hand was utterly useless. 
 The fingers felt strange and detached. 
 
 He reached out to the still form beside him, touching 
 the dark skin first with his fingers, and then, because they 
 had ceased to function, with the flesh of his wrist. He ex- 
 pected to find it cold. Singhai was alive, however, and 
 his warm blood beat close to the dark skin. 
 
 But he was deeply unconscious, and it was possible that 
 one foot was hopelessly mutilated. 
 
 For a moment Warwick lay quite still, looking his situa- 
 tion squarely in the face. He did not believe that either 
 he or his attendant was mortally or even very seriously 
 hurt. True, one of his arms had suffered paralysis, but 
 
22 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 there was no reason for thinking it had been permanently 
 injured. His hand would be badly scarred, but soon 
 as good as ever. The real question that faced them was that 
 of getting back to the bungalow. 
 
 Walking was out of the question. His whole body was 
 bruised and lacerated, and he was already dangerously weak 
 from loss of blood. It would take all his energy, these 
 first few hours, to keep his consciousness. Besides, it was 
 perfectly obvious that Singhai could not walk. And English 
 gentlemen do not desert their servants at a time like this. 
 The real mystery lay in the fact that the beaters had not 
 already found and rescued them. 
 
 He wore a watch with luminous dial on his left wrist, 
 and he managed to get it before his eyes. And then under- 
 standing came to him. A full hour had passed since he 
 and his servant had fought the mugger in the ford. And 
 the utter silence of early night had come down over the 
 jungle. 
 
 There was only one thing to believe. The beaters had 
 evidently heard him shoot, sought in vain for him in the 
 thickets, possibly passed within a few hundred feet of him, 
 and because he had been unconscious, he had not heard 
 them or called to them, and now they had given him up 
 for lost. He remembered with bitterness how all of them 
 had been sure that an encounter with Nahara would cost 
 him his life, and would thus be all the more quick to be- 
 lieve he had died in her talons. Nahara had her mate 
 and her own lameness to avenge, they had said, attributing in 
 their superstition human emotions to the brute natures of 
 animals. It would have been quite useless for Warwick 
 to attempt to tell them that the male tiger, in the mind 
 of her wicked mate, was no longer even a memory, and 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 23 
 
 that premeditated vengeance is an emotion almost unknown 
 in the animal world. Without leaders or encouragement, 
 and terribly frightened by the scene they had beheld be- 
 fore the village, they had quickly given up any attempt to 
 find her body. There had been none among them cool- 
 headed enough to reason out which trail he had likely taken, 
 and thus look for him by the ford. Likely they were 
 already huddled in their thatch huts, waiting till daylight. 
 
 Then he called into the darkness. A heavy body brushed 
 through the creepers, and stepping falsely, broke a twig. 
 He thought at first that it might be one of the villagers, 
 coming to look for him. But at once the step was silenced. 
 
 Warwick had a disturbing thought that the creature 
 that had broken the twig had not gone away, but was crouch- 
 ing down, in a curious manner, in the deep shadows. Nahara 
 had returned to her hunting. 
 
 IV 
 
 "Some time I too will be a hunter of tigers," Little Shi- 
 kara told his mother when the beaters began to circle 
 through the bamboos. "To carry a gun beside Warwick 
 Sahib — and to be honored in the circle under the tree!" 
 
 But his mother hardly listened. She was quivering with 
 fright. She had seen the last part of the drama in front 
 of the village; and she was too frightened even to notice 
 the curious imperturbability of her little son. But there 
 was no orderly retreat after Little Shikara had heard 
 the two reports of the rifle. At first there were only 
 the shouts of the beaters, singularly high-pitched, much 
 running back and forth in the shadows, and then a pell- 
 mell scurry to the shelter of the villages. 
 
24 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 For a few minutes there was wild excitement at the 
 village gates. Warwick Sahib was dead, they said; they 
 had heard the shots and run to the place of firing, and 
 beat up and down through the bamboos; and Warwick 
 Sahib had surely been killed and carried off by the tigress. 
 This dreadful story told, most of the villagers went to hide 
 at once in their huts; only a little circle of the bravest 
 men hovered at the gate. They watched with drawn faces 
 the growing darkness. 
 
 But there was one among them who was not yet a man- 
 grown; a boy so small that he could hover, unnoticed, in 
 the very smallest of the terrible shadow-patches. He was 
 Little Shikara, and he was shocked to the very depths of 
 his worshiping heart. For Warwick had been his hero, the 
 greatest man of all time, and he felt himself burning with 
 indignation that the beaters should return so soon. And 
 it was a curious fact that he had not as yet been infected 
 with the contagion of terror that was being passed from 
 man to man among the villagers. Perhaps his indignation 
 was too absorbing an emotion to leave room for terror, and 
 perhaps, far down in his childish spirit, he was made of 
 different stuff. He was a child of the jungle, and perhaps 
 he had shared of that great imperturbability and impassive- 
 ness that is the eternal trait of the wilderness. 
 
 He went up to one of the younger beaters who had told 
 and retold the story of catching a glimpse of Nahara in 
 the thickets until no one was left to tell it to. He was 
 standing silent, and Little Shikara thought it possible that 
 he might reach his ears. 
 
 "Give ear, Puran," he pleaded. "Didst thou look for 
 his body beside the ford over Tarai stream?" 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 25 
 
 "Nay, little one — though I passed within one hundred 
 paces." 
 
 "Dost thou not know that he and Singhai would of a 
 certainty cross at the ford to reach the fringe of jungle 
 from which he might watch the Eastern field? Some of 
 you looked on the trail beside the ford, but none looked 
 at the ford itself. And the sound of the rifle seemed to 
 come from thence." 
 
 "But why did he not call out?" 
 
 "Dead men could not call, but at least ye might have 
 frightened Nahara from the body. But perhaps he is 
 wounded, unable to speak, and lies there still " 
 
 But Puran had found another listener for his story, and 
 speedily forgot the boy. He hurried over to another of the 
 villagers, Khusru the hunter. 
 
 "Did no one look by the ford?" he asked, almost sobbing. 
 "For that is the place he had gone." 
 
 The native's eyes seemed to light. "Hai, little one, thou 
 hast thought of what thy elders had forgotten. There is 
 level land there, and clear. And I shall go at the first ray 
 of dawn " 
 
 "But not to-night, Khusru ?" 
 
 "Nay, little sinner! Wouldst thou have me torn to 
 pieces?" 
 
 Lastly Little Shikara went to his own father, and they 
 had a moment's talk at the outskirts of the throng. But 
 the answer was nay — just the same. Even his brave father 
 would not go to look for the body until daylight came. 
 The boy felt his skin prickling all over. 
 
 "But perhaps he is only wounded — and left to die. If 
 I go and return with word that he is there, wilt thou take 
 others and go out and bring him in?" 
 
26 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "Thou goest!" his father broke forth in a great roar of 
 laughter. "Why, thou little hawk! One would think 
 that thou wert a hunter of tigers thyself!" 
 
 Little Shikara blushed beneath the laughter. For he 
 was a very boyish little boy in most ways. But it seemed 
 to him that his sturdy young heart was about to break open 
 from bitterness. All of them agreed that Warwick Sahib, 
 perhaps wounded and dying, might be lying by the ford, 
 but none of them would venture forth to see. Unknowing, 
 he was beholding the expression of a certain age-old trait 
 of human nature. Men do not fight ably in the dark. 
 They need their eyes, and they particularly require a definite 
 object to give them determination. If these villagers knew 
 for certain that the Protector of the Poor lay wounded 
 or even dead beside the ford, they would have rallied 
 bravely, encouraged one another with words and oaths, and 
 gone forth to rescue him ; but they wholly lacked the courage 
 to venture again into the jungle on any such blind quest 
 as Little Shikara suggested. 
 
 But the boy's father should not have laughed. He should 
 have remembered the few past occasions when his straight 
 little son had gone into the jungle alone; and that remem- 
 brance should have silenced him. The difficulty lay in the 
 fact that he supposed his boy and he were of the same 
 flesh, and that Little Shikara shared his own great dread 
 of the night-curtained jungle. In this he was very badly 
 mistaken. Little Shikara had an inborn understanding 
 and love of the jungle; and except for such material dangers 
 as that of Nahara, he was not afraid of it at all. He 
 had no superstitions in regard to it. Perhaps he was too 
 young. But the main thing that the laugh did was to set 
 off, as a match sets off powder, a whole heartful of un- 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 27 
 
 exploded indignation in Shikara's breast. These villagers 
 not only had deserted their patron and protector, but also 
 they had laughed at the thought of rescue ! His own father 
 had laughed at him. 
 
 Little Shikara silently left the circle of villagers and 
 turned into the darkness. 
 
 At once the jungle silence closed round him. He hadn't 
 dreamed that the noise of the villagers would die so quickly. 
 Although he could still see the flame of the fire at the 
 village gate behind him, it was almost as if he had at 
 once dropped off into another world. Great flowers poured 
 perfume down upon him, and at seemingly a great distance 
 he heard the faint murmur of the wind. 
 
 At first, deep down in his heart, he had really not in- 
 tended to go all the way. He had expected to steal clear 
 to the outer edge of the firelight; and then stand listen- 
 ing to the darkness for such impressions as the jungle 
 would choose to give him. But there had been no threshold, 
 no interlude of preparation. The jungle in all its mystery 
 had folded about him at once. 
 
 He trotted softly down the elephant trail, a dim, fleet 
 shadow that even the keen eyes of Nahara could scarcely 
 have seen. At first he was too happy to be afraid. He 
 was always happy when the jungle closed round him. Be- 
 sides, if Nahara had killed, she would be full-fed by now 
 and not to be feared. Little Shikara hastened on, trembling 
 all over with a joyous sort of excitement. 
 
 If a single bird had flapped its wings in the branches, 
 if one little rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little 
 Shikara would likely have turned back. But the jungle 
 gods, knowing their son, stilled all the forest voices. He 
 crept on, still looking now and again over his shoulder to 
 
28 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 see the village fire. It still made a bright yellow tri- 
 angle in the dusk behind him. He didn't stop to think 
 that he was doing a thing most grown natives and many 
 white men would not have dared to do, — following a jungle 
 trail unarmed at night. If he had stopped to think at 
 all, he simply would have been unable to go on. He was 
 only following his instincts, voices that such forces as 
 maturity and grown-up intelligence and self-consciousness 
 obscure in older men, and the terror of the jungle could 
 not touch him. He went straight to do what service he 
 could for the white sahib that was one of his lesser gods. 
 
 Time after time he halted, but always he pushed on a 
 few more feet. Now he was over half-way to the ford, clear 
 to the forks in the trail. And then he turned about with 
 a little gasp of fear. 
 
 The light from the village had gone out. The thick 
 foliage of the jungle had come between. 
 
 He was really frightened now. It wasn't that he was 
 afraid he couldn't get back. The trail was broad and 
 hard and quite gray in the moonlight. But those far-off 
 beams of light had been a solace to his spirit, a reminder 
 that he had not yet broken all ties with the village. He 
 halted, intending to turn back. 
 
 Then a thrill began at his scalp and went clear to his 
 bare toes. Faint through the jungle silences he heard 
 Warwick Sahib calling to his faithless beaters. The voice 
 had an unmistakable quality of distress. 
 
 Certain of the villagers — a very few of them — said after- 
 ward that Little Shikara continued on because he was 
 afraid to go back. They said that he looked upon the 
 Heaven-born Sahib as a source of all power, in whose 
 protection no harm could befall him, and he sped toward 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 29 
 
 him because the distance was shorter than back to the 
 haven of fire at the village. But those who could look 
 deeper into Little Shikara's soul knew different. In some 
 degree at least he hastened on down that jungle trail of 
 peril because he knew that his idol was in distress, and 
 by laws that went deep he knew he must go to his aid. 
 
 The first few minutes after Warwick had heard a liv- 
 ing step in the thickets he spent in trying to reload his 
 rifle. He carried other cartridges in the right-hand trousers 
 pocket, but after a few minutes of futile effort it became 
 perfectly evident that he was not able to reach them. His 
 right arm was useless, and the fingers of his left, lacerated 
 by the mugger's bite, refused to take hold. 
 
 He had, however, three of the five shells the rifle held 
 still in his gun. The single question that remained was 
 whether or not they would be of use to him. 
 
 The rifle lay half under him, its stock protruding from 
 beneath his body. With the elbow of his left arm, he was 
 able to work it out. Considering the difficulties under 
 which he worked, he made amazingly few false motions; 
 and yet he worked with swiftness. Warwick was a man 
 who had been schooled and trained by many dangers; he 
 had learned to face them with open eyes and steady hands, 
 to judge with unclouded thought the exact per cent, of 
 his chances. He knew now that he must work swiftly. The 
 shape in the shadow was not going to wait all night. 
 
 But at that moment the hope of preserving his life that 
 he had clung to until now broke like a bubble in the sun- 
 light. He could not lift the gun to swing and aim it at 
 
30 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 a shape in the darkness. With his mutilated hands he could 
 not cock the strong-springed hammer. And if he could 
 do both these things with his fumbling, bleeding, lacerated 
 fingers, his right hand could not be made to pull the trigger. 
 Warwick Sahib knew at last just where he stood. Yet 
 if human sight could have penetrated that dusk, it would 
 have beheld no change of expression in the lean face. 
 
 An English gentleman lay at the frontier of death. But 
 that occasioned neither fawning nor a loss of his rigid self- 
 control. 
 
 Two things remained, however, that he might do. One 
 was to call and continue to call, so long as life lasted in 
 his body. He knew perfectly that more than once in the 
 history of India a tiger had been kept at a distance, at 
 least for a short period of time, by shouts alone. In that 
 interlude, perhaps help might come from the village. The 
 second thing was almost as impossible as raising and firing 
 the rifle; but by the luck of the gods he might achieve it. 
 He wanted to find Singhai's knife and hold it compressed 
 in his palm. 
 
 It wasn't that he had any vain hopes of repelling the 
 tiger's attack with a single knife-blade that would be prac- 
 tically impossible for his mutilated hand to hold. Nahara 
 had five or so knife blades in every paw and a whole set 
 of them in her mouth. She could stand on four legs and 
 fight, and Warwick could not lift himself on one elbow 
 and yet wield the blade. But there were other things to 
 be done with blades, even held loosely in the palm, at a 
 time like this. 
 
 He knew rather too much of the way of tigers. They do 
 not always kill swiftly. It is the tiger way to tease, long 
 moments, with half-bared talons; to let the prey crawl away 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 31 
 
 a few feet for the rapture of leaping at it again; to fondle 
 with an exquisite cruelty for moments that seem endless 
 to its prey. A knife, on the other hand, kills quickly. 
 Warwick much preferred the latter death. 
 
 And even as he called, again and again, he began to feel 
 about in the grass with his lacerated hand for the hilt of 
 the knife. Nahara was steadily stealing toward him through 
 the shadows. 
 
 The great tigress was at the height of her hunting mad- 
 ness. The earlier adventure of the evening when she had 
 missed her stroke, the stir and tumult of the beaters in 
 the wood, her many days of hunger, had all combined to 
 intensify her passion. And finally there had come the 
 knowledge, in subtle ways, that two of her own kind of 
 game were lying wounded and helpless beside the ford. 
 
 But even the royal tiger never forgets some small meas- 
 ure of its caution. She did not charge at once. The game 
 looked so easy that it was in some way suggestive of a trap. 
 She crept forward, a few feet at a time. The wild blood 
 began to leap through the great veins. The hair went 
 stiff on the neck muscles. 
 
 But Warwick shouted; and the sound for an instant ap- 
 palled her. She lurked in the shadows. 
 
 Again she crept forward, to pause when Warwick raised 
 his voice the second time. The man knew enough to call 
 at intervals rather than continuously. A long, continued 
 outcry would very likely stretch the tiger's nerves to a 
 breaking point and hurl her into a frenzy that would prob- 
 ably result in a death-dealing charge. Every few seconds 
 he called again. In the intervals between, the tiger crept 
 forward. Her excitement grew upon her. She crouched 
 lower. Her sinewy tail had whipped softly at first; now 
 
32 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 it was lashing almost to her sides. And finally it began 
 to have a slight vertical movement that Warwick, for- 
 tunately for his spirit, could not see. 
 
 Then the little light that the moon poured down was 
 suddenly reflected in Nahara's eyes. All at once they burned 
 out of the dusk; two blue-green circles of fire fifty feet 
 distant in the darkness. At that Warwick gasped, for the 
 first time. In another moment the great cat would be in 
 range, and he had not yet found the knife. Nothing re- 
 mained to believe but that it was lost in the mud of the 
 ford, fifty feet distant, and that the last dread avenue of 
 escape was cut off. 
 
 But at that instant the gasp gave way to a whispered 
 oath of wonder. Some living creature was running lightly 
 down the trail toward him, soft, light feet that came with 
 amazing swiftness. For once in his life Warwick did not 
 know where he stood. For once he was the chief figure 
 of a situation he did not entirely understand. He tried 
 to probe into the darkness with his tired eyes. 
 
 "Here I am!" he called. The tiger, starting to creep 
 forward once more, halted at the voice. A small, straight 
 figure sped like an arrow out of the thickets and halted 
 at his side. 
 
 It was such an astounding appearance as for an instant 
 completely paralyzes the mental faculties. Warwick's first 
 emotion was simply a great and hopeless astonishment. Long 
 inured to the mystery of the jungle, he thought he had 
 passed the point where any earthly happening could actually 
 bewilder him. But in spite of it, in spite of the fire-eyed 
 peril in the darkness, he was quite himself when he spoke. 
 The voice that came out of the silence was wholly steady, 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 33 
 
 a kindly, almost amused voice of one who knows life as 
 it is and who has mastered his own destiny. 
 
 "Who in the world?" he asked in the vernacular. 
 
 "It is I — Little Shikara," a tremulous voice answered. 
 Except for the tremor he could not keep from his tone, 
 he spoke as one man to another. 
 
 Warwick knew at once that Little Shikara was not yet 
 aware of the presence of the tiger, fifty feet distant in the 
 shadows. But he knew nothing else. The whole situation 
 was beyond his ken. 
 
 But his instincts were manly and true. "Then' run 
 speedily, little one," he whispered, "back to the village. 
 There is danger here in the dark." 
 
 Little Shikara tried to speak, and he swallowed painfully. 
 A lump had come in his throat that at first would not let 
 him talk. "Nay, Protector of the Poor!" he answered. "I 
 — I came alone. And I — I am thy servant." 
 
 Warwick's heart bounded. Not since his youth had left 
 him to a gray world, had his strong heart leaped in just 
 this way before. "Merciful God !" he whispered in English. 
 "Has a child come to save me?" Then he whipped again 
 into the vernacular and spoke swiftly; for no further sec- 
 onds were to be wasted. "Little Shikara, have you ever 
 fired a gun?" 
 
 "No, Sahib " 
 
 "Then lift it up and rest it across my body. Thou 
 knowest how it is held " 
 
 Little Shikara didn't know exactly, but he rested the gun 
 on Warwick's body ; and he had seen enough target practise 
 to crook his finger about the trigger. And together, the 
 strangest pair of huntsmen that the Indian stars ever looked 
 down upon, they waited. 
 
34 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "It is Nahara," Warwick explained softly. For he 
 had decided to be frank with Little Shikara, trusting all to 
 the courage of a child. "It all depends on thee. Pull 
 back the hammer with thy thumb." 
 
 Little Shikara obeyed. He drew it back until it clicked, 
 and did not, as Warwick had feared, let it slip through 
 his fingers back against the breach. "Yes, Sahib," he whis- 
 pered breathlessly. His little brave heart seemed about to 
 explode in his breast. But it was the test, and he knew 
 he must not waver in the sahib's eyes. 
 
 "It is Nahara, and thou art a man," Warwick said again. 
 "And now thou must wait until thou seest her eyes." 
 
 So they strained into the darkness; and in an instant 
 more they saw again the two circles of greenish, smolder- 
 ing fire. They were quite near now — Nahara was almost 
 in leaping range. 
 
 "Thou wilt look through the little hole at the rear and 
 then along the barrel," Warwick ordered swiftly, "and 
 thou must see the two eyes along the little notch in front." 
 
 "I see, Sahib — and between the eyes," came the same 
 breathless whisper. The little brown body held quite still. 
 Warwick could not even feel it trembling against his own. 
 For a moment, by virtue of some strange prank of Shiv, the 
 jungle gods were giving their own strength to this little 
 brown son of theirs beside the ford. 
 
 "Thou wilt not jerk or move?" 
 
 "Nay, Sahib." And he spoke true. The world might 
 break to pieces or blink out, but he would not throw off 
 his aim by any terror motions. They could see the tiger's 
 outline now, the lithe, low-hung body, the tail that twitched 
 up and down. 
 
 "Then pull the trigger," Warwick whispered. 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 35 
 
 The whole jungle world rocked and trembled from the 
 violence of the report. 
 
 When the villagers, aroused by the roar of the rifle and 
 led by Khusru and Puran and Little Shikara's father, rushed 
 down with their firebrands to the ford, their first thought 
 was that they had come only to the presence of the dead. 
 Three human beings lay very still beside the stream, and 
 fifty feet in the shadows something else, that obviously was 
 not a human being, lay very still too. But they were not 
 to have any such horror story to tell their wives. Only 
 one of the three by the ford, Singhai, the gun-bearer, was 
 even really unconscious; Little Shikara, the rifle still held 
 lovingly in his arms, had gone into a half-faint from fear 
 and nervous exhaustion, and Warwick Sahib had merely 
 closed his eyes to the darting light of the firebrands. The 
 only death that had occurred was that of Nahara the 
 tigress, and she had a neat hole bored completely through 
 her neck. To all evidence, she had never stirred after Little 
 Shikara's bullet had gone home. 
 
 After much confusion and shoutings and falling over one 
 another, and gazing at Little Shikara as if he were some 
 new kind of a ghost, the villagers got a stretcher each for 
 Singhai and the Protector of the Poor. And when they got 
 them well loaded into them, and Little Shikara had quite 
 come to himself and was standing with some bewilderment 
 in the circle of staring townspeople, a clear, commanding 
 voice ordered that they all be silent. Warwick Sahib was 
 going to make what was the nearest approach to a speech 
 that he had made since various of his friends had decoyed 
 him to a dinner in London some years before. 
 
 The words that he said, the short vernacular words that 
 
36 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 have a way of coming straight to the point, established 
 Little Shikara as a legend through all that corner of British 
 India. It was Little Shikara who had come alone through 
 the jungle, said he; it was Little Shikara's shining eyes 
 that had gazed along the barrel, and it was his own brown 
 finger that had pulled the trigger. Thus, said Warwick, he 
 would get the bounty that the British Government offered, 
 British rupees that to a child's eyes would be past count- 
 ing. Thus in time, with Warwick's influence, his would 
 be a great voice through all of India. For small as he 
 was, and not yet grown, he was of the true breed. 
 
 After the shouting was done, Warwick turned to Little 
 Shikara to see how he thought upon all these things. "Thou 
 shalt have training for the army, little one, where thy good 
 nerve will be of use, and thou shalt be a native officer, 
 along with the sons of princes. I, myself, will see to it, for 
 I do not hold my life so cheap that I will forget the thing 
 that thou hast done to-night." 
 
 And he meant what he said. The villagers stood still 
 when they saw his earnest face. "And what, little hawk, 
 wilt thou have more?" he asked. 
 
 Little Shikara trembled and raised his eyes. "Only some- 
 times to ride with thee, in thy howdah, as thy servant, when 
 thou again seekest the tiger." 
 
 The whole circle laughed at this. They were just human, 
 after all. Their firebrands were held high, and gleamed 
 on Little Shikara's dusky face, and made a luster in his 
 dark eyes. The circle, roaring with laughter, did not hear 
 the Sahib's reply, but they did see him nod his head. 
 
 "I would not dare to go without thee now," Warwick 
 told him. 
 
 And thus little Shikara's dreams came true: to be known 
 
The Heart of Little Shikara 37 
 
 through many villages as a hunter of tigers and a brave 
 follower and comrade of the forest trails. And thus he 
 came into his own, — in those far-off glades of Burma, in 
 the jungles of the Manipur. 
 
NEVER KILL A PORCUPINE 
 
 When the forest night began to descend, Urson descended 
 too. They didn't come from the same place. The forest 
 night seemed to come from some strange, still land that 
 hung above the mountains, a place remote, more wild and 
 new than the earth. It dropped down like a curtain, soft 
 and mysterious and vibrant. Urson came from the top 
 of the pine trees where he had been sleeping. 
 
 It is a most peculiar thing about the porcupine that he 
 needs and takes more sleep than any other forest creature. 
 There doesn't seem to be any reason why this should be 
 so, except that he doesn't have any way in particular to spend 
 his time. His nerves certainly do not need rest. He never 
 strains them, either by thinking or hunting, or any other 
 way. He was just old Urson, forgetful and stupid and 
 slow, that to most people does not matter at all. 
 
 Yet he does matter. His bristly body would not be 
 known in the forest if it were not so. There are certain 
 laws in the wild that no man has wit enough completely 
 to understand, and the presence of Urson has been decreed 
 by one of those laws. Life is too hard in the wild for 
 useless existences. He has his place, just as immutable as 
 the graceful cougar or the swift deer, and he fills it in his 
 own way. He matters in general and he matters in par- 
 ticular. Although the squirrels scarcely gave him a glance, 
 and the grouse, knowing that Urson didn't eat meat for one 
 thing and that, if he did, he couldn't catch it, for another, 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 39 
 
 insulted him by perching within three feet of his spiny body ; 
 to one particular creature at least his presence in the pine 
 tree was of utmost importance. This creature was the 
 buzzard, watching from the clouds. 
 
 He had been keeping an eye on the porcupine a large 
 part of the afternoon. The reason was perfectly obvious. 
 The porcupines were notoriously short-lived. The buzzard 
 was much more interested in death than in life; and in 
 these latter days, when the hills were full of human hunters, 
 few of these mammals lived to get their full growth. It 
 was not that they were particularly good game, or that 
 their quill-covered skins were of any value. It was just 
 that they couldn't run away and thoughtless sportsmen from 
 the valleys, who could not shoot straight enough to hit the 
 deer or see clearly enough to distinguish a cougar on the 
 pine limbs, or walk stealthily enough to approach a wolf, 
 found them good targets for marksmanship. They usually 
 didn't even bother to carry the creatures home; and this 
 made their hunting all the more interesting to the buzzard. 
 And as a result of all these things, the breed was almost gone 
 from the Oregon woods. Of the thousands that used to be, 
 scarcely scores remained. 
 
 The buzzard in the clouds had felt quite sure that his 
 watch would soon be rewarded. Surely some plainsman 
 would soon want to try his sights on the awkward body. 
 He felt extremely sorry when the shadows came down and 
 hid Urson. But he would look for him again in the morn- 
 ing; and anything might happen before the night was done. 
 Things have a way of happening in the mountain night, and 
 the buzzard is most thankful. "I own the forest," he tells 
 his fledglings, "for all living things therein return to me 
 in the end." 
 
40 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 When one stops to think about it, one can see how this 
 is true. It explains very clearly the watch he keeps over 
 the forest. He is the undertaker, and it is his business to 
 find out about every death. For certain reasons of his own, 
 he likes to be present when it happens. He is ineffably 
 patient. He knows, better than all other creatures, what a 
 universal and inevitable thing death is and that, if he only 
 waits long enough, he will surely win. From his place 
 in the clouds he sees the beginning and the end of all 
 things; for every cub that is cleaned by its mother's tongue 
 in the sunlight will sometime lie still on the hillside, — ripe 
 and ready for his sharp beak. Every bird that flies, and 
 every cougar, proud in his strength and grace, every wolf, 
 howling triumph from the ridges, is a prospect, as the book 
 agents say, worth watching day and night with tireless eyes. 
 
 Every hunter that starts from his cabin in the dawn is 
 worth watching too, for some part of each deer he shoots 
 will not be worth carrying into camp; and then the buz- 
 zard's hour will come. And, for that matter, there have 
 been times when the hunters themselves failed to come back 
 to camp ! In the mountains, such things as sudden blizzards 
 and unsteady boulders on a precipice and getting lost often 
 upset a hunter's plans in regard to his homecoming; and the 
 buzzard croaks his joy. But of all the living things he 
 watches, none of them return to him so surely and quickly 
 as the porcupines. 
 
 The story of Urson is the story of how once the buzzard 
 watched in vain. It is the tale of how, for once, the thing 
 that he told his fledglings did not come true. But more 
 than that, the story of Urson, climbing down the pine trunk 
 in the evening, is the illustration of that immutable forest 
 law, — that all things are because they need to be, and that 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 41 
 
 even such a blunt, stupid, guileless creature as old Urson has 
 his place to fill in the eternal scheme of things. 
 
 He looked just like some enormous variety of burr, as 
 he waited a moment at the base of the pine. One who has 
 never seen a porcupine cannot possibly imagine what gro- 
 tesque creatures they are. The biggest of them weighs forty 
 pounds, as large as a good-sized bear cub. They have a 
 hump like a dromedary; but it isn't the kind of hump a 
 desert-farer would care to ride upon. They have curiously 
 flat tails, and little heads, and long claws that they use in 
 climbing, much as a man uses his fingers. But the most 
 curious thing about them is the armor that they wear. Their 
 furry hides are simply full of quills, each as sharp as the 
 sharpest needle. 
 
 Urson did not leave the tree trunk at once. Life in the 
 forest is a matter of always having an immediate refuge. He 
 was able to get about fairly swiftly in a tree. He could 
 climb out on limbs that would not bear a cougar's weight. 
 But he was almost helpless on the ground. So before he 
 ventured out he took a long look about him, and sniffed 
 the air for any smells of danger. Then he crept slowly 
 out into the thickets. 
 
 The forest was wakening. It sleeps during the day; 
 but now it was full of the stir of waking wild creatures. 
 A deer was stealing forth from the buckbush, softly, ravished 
 by the age-old mystery of the mountain night. Urson waited, 
 a shadow in the deep brush, till it was past. It wasn't 
 that a deer is a creature of which the porcupine needs to 
 be afraid. It was just that Urson could not see for sure 
 whether the animal was really a deer. His eyes were none 
 too good. He hovered an instant, relying on his keener nose 
 
42 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 to tell him the truth. Truly, it was just old Blacktail, 
 climbing to his feeding grounds on the ridges. 
 
 Urson trotted on farther into the underbrush, halting at 
 last beside a spring at the head of the glen. It was one of 
 those little mountain springs, fairly choked with ferns, that 
 are sometimes found fresh and cool even in the hottest 
 seasons. But it was not the water that interested Urson. It 
 is an interesting quality in the porcupine that he requires 
 less water than any other living creature of his weight. The 
 dew that lies on his green food is usually enough for him; 
 and he can go literally weeks without actually drinking. 
 And thus he escapes the terrible fear of the drouth that 
 is one of the terrors of the forest folk. The spring was 
 interesting to him solely because of the roots and tender 
 plants that grew in it. 
 
 Something splashed in the mud; and Urson felt the 
 thrill and movement of the skin along his back, — always the 
 first reflex of any terror. Human beings, frightened speech- 
 less, have the same feeling, a hideous creeping of the flesh 
 that never can be forgotten. But it has no particular function 
 with men. It is just a race memory, a reflex, from more 
 savage times in the world's young days. With many of the 
 beasts, it serves to make the hair on the neck and shoulders 
 stand erect. With the porcupines, it changes the smooth- 
 lying quills into a perfect armor of bristling points. They 
 suddenly stand out in all directions, a formidable defense 
 against attack. 
 
 But the function was not quite completed when Urson rec- 
 ognized the inhabitant of the spring. He had thought 
 it might be a serpent at first. Serpents are among the tradi- 
 tional enemies of the porcupine. It could have easily been a 
 rattlesnake, cooling itself in the damp weeds. But it was 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 43 
 
 only a water dog, — one of those curious little lizards that 
 look like baby crocodiles, and come from heaven knows 
 where to live in the cold mountain springs. They are usu- 
 ally alone, and how they traverse the miles of parched moun- 
 tains to find the spot is beyond the wit of man to tell. 
 
 Urson had thrown down his root when he first heard 
 the creature, and by now he had forgotten all about it; 
 he was notoriously absent-minded. He soon found an- 
 other, and holding it in his forepaws as a squirrel holds a 
 nut, he began to munch it. Then he had some stringy 
 plants, followed by the tender bark off the young shrubs. 
 He did not eat fast. The evening grew to late night before 
 he was filled. 
 
 The rustle of forest life went on about him. Night birds 
 called. The little under people, the creatures of the lower 
 plane that burrow in the ground, whispered and rustled in 
 the deep shadows just beyond. Once a gopher emerged 
 from its subterranean tunnel, heard the clumsy body in the 
 lush ferns, and ducked quickly back. The gopher was 
 blind, and he could not see that it was just old Urson, the 
 porcupine. Perhaps the latter felt somewhat proud that 
 one living creature, at least, had fled from him. Once a 
 chipmunk watched him, utterly motionless, from the thick 
 stalks of the underbrush. Only moving things can be dis- 
 tinguished by Urson's ineffective eyes. 
 
 The moon rose, and the wind that starts down from 
 the snow field at midnight began to sway the tops of the 
 pines. This is always an hour of mystery in the forest. 
 The thickets, too dense and heavy for the moonbeams to 
 penetrate, whisper and throb with life. All the sounds 
 are hushed and strange; and, some way, they give an im- 
 pression of a stupendous silence. All the forest creatures 
 
44 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 move with stealing steps, with scarcely the rustle of a leaf 
 or a crack of a dry twig. Urson grunted, and climbed 
 laboriously up the hill. 
 
 He began to wonder why he saw none of his kind. He 
 did not know that the breed of porcupine was almost gone 
 from the Oregon woods. He only knew that he wanted 
 companionship, — a female, perhaps, or maybe a playmate 
 that would follow him on an exploring trip to the top of 
 the distant ridge. It took a lot of courage to go alone. 
 There were so many strange smells and terrifying noises. 
 His memory only went so far as to realize his meetings 
 with his own kind had been ever fewer as the years had 
 passed. In fact, he could hardly recall the last time that 
 he and a quilled brother had sniffed and made friends in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 A flock of grouse heard his heavy step in the brush and 
 darted from their covert. They made a terrifying noise. 
 Urson waited, perfectly silent, till the last echo had died 
 away. Then he halted to strip the bark from a vine that 
 covered a rotten stump. A snowshoe rabbit — people say 
 they are called snowshoes because of their enormous feet 
 that holds them up on the snow drifts — pointed two ques- 
 tioning ears to him; then hopped away on missions of his 
 own. 
 
 The forest sounds grew louder. The meat eaters were 
 hunting. Far away, from the top of some remote ridge, a 
 wolf howl rose and fell. It was very faint, and more sad 
 than the saddest music of a Master. Urson stood straining, 
 listening to the far call. But soon the silence swallowed it, 
 and he could hear it no more. 
 
 He crept on, more softly now. Sometimes he stopped 
 to feed, and more than once he whirled to meet some sud- 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 45 
 
 den sound behind him. The night drew toward dawn, 
 till at last a tiny ribbon of lighted sky lay all along the 
 eastern mountains. And nothing remained to do but find a 
 good resting place for the day. 
 
 But still he loitered. Perhaps the mystery of the night 
 had hold of him. Perhaps he was not so blunt and dull but 
 that he was lonesome for some of his own kind. He was 
 taking risks by lingering in the thickets while the dawn came 
 out. At least he should keep close to a tree, ready at any 
 instant to crawl to safety in its high limbs. The shadows 
 were receding swiftly ; and he found himself in the middle of 
 an old burn, grown to heavy brush. Except for the bare, 
 black ruins, the nearest tree was nearly two hundred feet 
 distant. Scarce understanding his own sudden alarm, he 
 ambled quickly toward it. Perhaps there was a faint smell 
 on the wind that his blunt mind had not yet interpreted, but 
 of which his instincts had warned. And he was still one 
 hundred feet from the questionable safety of the tree when 
 he met the cougar cub. 
 
 The thing suddenly sprang from the buckbush, not ten 
 feet from him. It weighed hardly more than Urson him- 
 self; it was graceful and tawny and only one year old; yet 
 the porcupine had no delusions whatever about it. In the 
 days when he was a little, blind, puppy porcupine, his mother 
 had told him stories of the Death whose eyes are green 
 lights in the darkness. He knew from instinct what the 
 claws were like. Urson's only hope was that the young 
 cougar has not yet had lessons in the way of handling por- 
 cupines. 
 
 Urson ordinarily moves very slowly. He is the snail 
 among beasts. Yet not even the cougar himself could have 
 got on the defensive more quickly. His quills had been 
 
46 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 lying smoothly all over his furry hide. In a single instant, 
 each of them stood erect and stiff, each one a formidable 
 weapon of defense. He seemed simply to double in size. 
 His tail swelled too. What had been before a harmless- 
 looking rodent thing was now a living phalanx of sharp 
 spines. 
 
 The cougar did not know what to make of him. He 
 had never seen a porcupine before. He knew perfectly 
 that here was meat. His instinct told him that the creature 
 was fair game; yet he was frankly puzzled as to how to 
 make the attack. Urson did not try to flee, and this was 
 a curious thing: he simply sat still, hunched up into a 
 grotesque, burr-like ball, as if waiting for the cub to make 
 the first move. 
 
 It would have been very nice for Urson to have been 
 able to shoot his quills, as so many story books say he does. 
 A well-directed quill or two might have relieved the situa- 
 tion at once. But in reality, he could only rattle them to- 
 gether and squeal his anger. 
 
 The noise the quills made sounded ominous at first. The 
 cub kept his distance. But as he waited, as Urson still 
 sat in his ridiculous hump on the ground, his courage came 
 back to him. He began slowly to walk about the crea- 
 ture, ever narrowing his circle and snarling as furiously as 
 he could. Then he suddenly stretched out a cautious paw 
 to strike at it. 
 
 It was the worst thing he could have done and was one 
 of the most painful mistakes of his whole life. If he had 
 been a wiser little cougar, he would never have stretched 
 his paw at all. The porcupine is a great deal like a nettle, 
 — a tight hold on him is less painful than a touch. The 
 wisest way would have been to crush the creature's head with 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 47 
 
 one furious leap and bite. It might have also been ef- 
 fective to have scooped him over with an upper-cut blow 
 and attacked the abdomen. The throat was an exposed place, 
 too; and why nature should have left such a vital spot 
 unprotected is the final proof that Urson has not had 
 a square deal in the world. 
 
 Urson suddenly lashed out with his thorny tail. He 
 struck the cub fairly across the nose. The animal leaped 
 back, shrieking with pain. At least four of the tiny spines 
 were stuck fast in the soft flesh of his nose. 
 
 He could not get them out. He rolled about in vain, 
 tearing and striking at them. Then he sat down and howled 
 in agony, all fight taken out of him. The adventure would 
 have ended at that instant except for one thing, the thing 
 that Urson dreaded most. — A cougar cub means a full- 
 grown cougar somewhere about. The mother, hunting on 
 the hillside, had heard the call of pain and came bound- 
 ing to the rescue. 
 
 She was no foolish cub, to expose her nose to the swish- 
 ing tail. She had dealt with porcupines before. She knew 
 just how to handle them. She took in the situation at 
 a glance, lapped once at her baby's tortured nose, and stole 
 up close to Urson. But she did not get too close. She 
 knew that the porcupine could not move quickly on his 
 awkward legs, and she remained just out of range of the 
 tail. The porcupine backed away, but she kept the same 
 distance between them. She was looking for the instant 
 when his throat would offer a fair mark — then her head 
 would lash out. 
 
 When meat was plentiful she had often passed the porcu- 
 pines by. They were awkward to eat, for one thing, and 
 hardly big enough to be interesting for another. But she 
 
48 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 had missed her kill to-night. Her disposition was at its 
 worst. Besides, the thing had injured the joy and pride 
 of her life, her tawny cub. 
 
 Urson squealed and rattled his quills in vain. It was 
 simply a waiting game, with death inevitable in the end. 
 There was no hope whatever of intimidating this tawny 
 creature. It was the worst moment in all of Urson's life. 
 
 But just then there came an interlude. Urson was not 
 to die in the cougar's claws after all. For suddenly, with 
 no apparent cause, the great sinuous creature whirled on 
 her velvet paws to face the long slope behind her. 
 
 She seemed at once to forget his existence. She seemed 
 to forget her cub, and all the madness and rapture of the 
 hunt. The green light died in her eyes. Her body sank 
 lower, the lashing tail stood still. In an instant the queen 
 of the forest was reduced to a cowering, terrified, impotent 
 thing that could not even fight for her own offspring. 
 
 Urson could not understand at first. His senses were 
 blunt, and he could neither hear nor see the approach of 
 this new foe. True, a strange smell hung heavy in the 
 air. And what hunter was so mighty that even WhisperfootJ 
 was afraid? 
 
 But then, as the forest sounds died out, Urson could hear 
 its footsteps. They were curiously heavy, the step of one 
 who tried to walk with silence, but really made more noise 
 than old Woof, shuffling through the buckbush. They 
 were hard feet, too, not the soft pads of the forest creatures. 
 They did not sound at all the same. The cougar and her 
 cub faded and blended into the brown thickets, — simply 
 brown smoke that vanished as if by a magician's magic. 
 Then Urson lifted his head, and saw. 
 
 Two tall forms were swinging down the ridge — two 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 49 
 
 curious, forked creatures, walking on the hind legs. Urson 
 did not know his danger. It was the moment the buzzard 
 had been watching for all the previous day. If the cougar 
 had killed Urson, the buzzard's meal, except for the spiny 
 hide, would have been postponed. The cougar would have 
 eaten him herself. But human hunters left their dead on 
 the hillside. These two coming down the slope were men, 
 armed with guns. And likely one of them would want 
 to test his marksmanship on the grotesque, bristling body. 
 
 The two that came stealing down the ridge in the dawn 
 didn't look like the usual type of mountain men. The 
 residents of the hills are usually gaunt and dark, and have 
 a peculiar, shuffling stride that once learned never is for- 
 gotten. One of the two, the man who walked in front, was 
 dressed in the tans and puttees that men call outing clothes. 
 They were new and obviously of great cost. A new rifle 
 lay in the hollow of his arm. He was a middle-aged man, 
 clean-shaven; and his strong features and straightforward 
 eyes represented the best of Western civilization. It was 
 not an unattractive face at all. But no one had to look 
 twice at him to know he was that creature whom the moun- 
 taineers call a tenderfoot. In fact, this was his first big- 
 game hunt in the Oregon mountains. 
 
 The other man was strikingly different. He was not 
 even of the same race. Even the forest creatures might 
 have told this much. His carriage was different, his hair 
 grew long and straight and black, and his face had a rather 
 pleasant copper color. He was the kind of man that the 
 West used to know before degeneracy came upon its ab- 
 origines. He was Long Tom, the Indian, — trapper and 
 mountaineer and guide. 
 
50 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "Wait," the white man warned. "It's a porcupine, isn't 
 it ? Chance to see if I can hit anything with this gun." 
 
 He raised his rifle to his shoulder and peered along its 
 barrel. He couldn't miss. The creature was scarcely fifty 
 yards distant, standing still and exposed in the clearing. 
 The long, blundering trail of Urson had evidently come 
 to an end at last. 
 
 He did not realize his danger. He had never seen men 
 before. Possibly they were too far away for him to see 
 clearly; besides, his instincts only warned him when foes 
 came close. Even now his quills were lying down again, 
 and he was preparing to find refuge in the nearest tree. 
 
 Booth, as the man was known, saw him clearly between 
 the sights of the rifle. But before ever his finger could press 
 back on the trigger, Long Tom stepped beside him. 
 
 "Ugh !" he grunted disapprovingly. He stretched a brown 
 arm and quietly took the rifle from the man's hands. Calmly 
 he slipped the hammer back against the breach and handed 
 back the weapon. Booth looked at him in wonder. 
 
 "Never kill a porcupine — for sport," the Indian said 
 simply. 
 
 Booth looked from the beast to the man. "Why not, 
 Tom?" he asked. He almost whispered the question. 
 
 But the Indian made no answer. He stolidly kept on, 
 down the trail. 
 
 The .man walked with him in silence for a moment. "I'm 
 rather curious, Tom," he went on at last. "Why didn't 
 you want me to shoot that porcupine?" 
 
 The Indian answered as if his thoughts were far away. 
 "The white man will find out — sometime," he replied. "If 
 he hunts long enough in the forests, maybe he know. But 
 your children wish you never know." 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 51 
 
 Booth asked no more questions. He knew his guide. He 
 had learned the silent ways of the Indian; and he felt that 
 he had probed into a mountain law that is not meant for 
 tenderfeet to know. Once they have learned, by experience 
 made known, they cease to be tenderfeet. As for the Indian, 
 perhaps no conscious experience prompted the words. Per- 
 haps it was just a tradition, or even an instinct, — such im- 
 pulses as civilization has cost white men the power to feel. 
 The two went on, silently in the dawn, and left Urson 
 to climb his tree in peace. 
 
 The Indians used to believe unquestioningly in the ex- 
 istence of forest gods. Long Tom still believed in them. 
 But whether or not they Teally existed, some power decreed 
 that before ever Chandos Booth was to return to his wife 
 and fireside, he was to lose the name of tenderfoot. He 
 was to become a forester, with the shadow of the pines on 
 his spirit. 
 
 It happened on the fourth day of his hunt. He had 
 met Urson on the first. Three days thereafter he had 
 wandered with his guide over the high plateaus, and already 
 his outing clothes were stained and out of press. He had 
 killed some game. The fourth day he was in the region 
 of the Umpqua Divide, a certain waste of endless ridges 
 that divide the valleys of the Umpqua and the Rogue rivers, 
 — two salmon-choked streams that race through southern 
 Oregon. The divide itself was not a particularly attractive 
 country. It had not too many springs, its forests were end- 
 less, and the ridges looked all alike. 
 
 "You will follow down through the glen and drive out 
 any deer," he told his guide in the morning. "I will walk 
 along the hillside, and shoot 'em as they come out." 
 
 "Then keep me in sight," the Indian warned. 
 
52 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Booth simply laughed. He had a very charming, boyish 
 laugh that was good to hear. But if he had known the 
 mountains, their way of playing tricks on the unsuspecting, 
 he would have listened soberly and heeded. 
 
 He did not keep the Indian in sight. He followed along 
 the crest of the ridge and was much surprised to find the 
 canyon in front of him, rather than to the left. He ex- 
 plained it, with an instant's thought, by the fact that it 
 likely curved about the base of the hill. He was quite 
 unaware that he had inadvertently crossed over the ridge, 
 and was looking into a different canyon. It is a thing 
 very easy to do in the mountains. 
 
 He went down into the canyon, looking for Long Tom. 
 On the way he got into a perfect jungle of buckbush, and 
 after a futile effort to fight his way through it, the toil 
 of a solid hour that sped faster than he thought, he made 
 a wide detour around it. Then he called for Long Tom. 
 
 He assumed, of course, that the Indian was waiting on 
 top of the next ridge, as was planned. So he felt no par- 
 ticular worry. Even if he didn't find him, he had only 
 to stride back into camp. Long Tom could come in alone. 
 So he forced his way up a steep ridge to the hill where 
 he had told the Indian to wait. It never even occurred 
 to him that he could be mistaken in the hill. 
 
 Perhaps the Indian had encountered the buckbush and 
 had not yet reached the point. He decided to wait. He 
 waited over a half-hour, and the woods seemed to grow 
 more silent. He was hot too, and wanted a drink. He 
 decided he would descend into the valley to find one. 
 
 But all that he found was the buckbush; and he was 
 tired and disgruntled by the time he had forced his way 
 out of it. And the appearance of the sun was a surprise 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 53 
 
 to him. It didn't seem to be in quite the right place; and, 
 besides, it was very high. He glanced at his watch. It 
 was already past noon. 
 
 Before they had left camp, on the first day, the two 
 of them had arranged for signals. Booth had thought it 
 a piece of foolishness. He was used to finding his way 
 around alone. But the Indian was insistent. So they 
 told each other that in case they wanted an answer, each 
 would fire three shots swiftly, then two more at an in- 
 terval of ten seconds each. He took out his watch; then 
 blazed into the trunk of a great pine. 
 
 But when he pulled the trigger the fifth time, the hammer 
 clanged down upon an empty breech. He had forgotten 
 that he had shot at the brown flash of a deer in the early 
 morning, after which he had not reloaded. By the time 
 he had seized a shell, inserted it, and fired again, another 
 ten seconds had elapsed. 
 
 He thought possibly that the signal sounded enough like 
 the one agreed upon and that the Indian would answer. 
 So he waited two full minutes. The woods remained 
 ominously silent. 
 
 So he decided to give the signal again. Perhaps the 
 Indian had thought he was merely shooting at game. Long 
 Tom was a sort of rattle-brain, anyway, — or why should he 
 have objected to his shooting the porcupine? He felt in 
 his shell pocket and reloaded his rifle. His pocket felt 
 rather light, but he did not particularly notice the fact. 
 He fired five times more, giving the signal perfectly. 
 
 Again he waited, and again the woods were still. There 
 remained no other possibility but that the Indian was too 
 far distant for the sound of the rifle crack to reach him. 
 
 But except for a strange and inner feeling of discomfort, 
 
 ,r* '^ 
 
54 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 he was not at all worried. He would simply hunt back 
 along the ridges, and go into camp. It was possibly ten 
 miles distant. The Indian would come in the twilight. He 
 began to load his gun. 
 
 It held five shots. One other remained in his pocket. 
 In the manner of most hunters, seeking deer, he had not 
 laden himself down with useless cartridges. He had taken 
 seventeen, — for rare is the hunter who gets more than seven- 
 teen shots at big game in a single day. One had been fired 
 away in the morning, and ten were expended in the futile 
 signals. 
 
 He started out in what he supposed was the direction of 
 camp. The trail was remarkably hard going. He didn't 
 remember such steep cliffs and towering rocks on the way 
 out. The hills, however, looked identical,, He felt there 
 could be no possibility of a mistake. 
 
 All at once his trail ended in a veritable wall of buck- 
 bush. But the hour was growing late; so he decided to 
 push his way through it. He did get through it, in the 
 end. Let that be said in tribute to the man's strength and 
 determination, although it was a condemnation of his good 
 sense as far as progression through the mountains was con- 
 cerned. He battled through that brushy wall for three 
 long hours. It seemed to go on forever. 
 
 He was very tired and very thirsty, and was beginning 
 to feel hungry by the time he had reached the open forest. 
 He came out upon a rock-strewn ridge that he could not 
 remember seeing before. And as he stood, breathing hard, 
 on the white-hot shale, he saw the buzzard for the first 
 time. It was riding low in the sky, and it seemed to be 
 watching him. 
 
 He glanced at it indifferently at first, then he studied it 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 55 
 
 with squinted eyes. Yes, the thing seemed to be keeping an 
 eye on him. And because the shadow of the pines was be- 
 ginning to deepen on his spirit, because he was beginning 
 to know the mountains, their strength and their remorse- 
 lessness, he felt a shiver of hate and fear that was at once 
 burning and freezing through his nerves. 
 
 Then he started doggedly on toward camp. Let it 
 never be doubted but that Chandos Booth was a man of the 
 first water. Kind husband, gentle father, he was also strong- 
 sinewed and great-spirited. He held a high place in the 
 valleys below him. His influence spread farther even than 
 the mountains, — and they seemed to be endless. He did 
 not permit his fatigue to blunt and dull his thought. He 
 came soberly to the conclusion that, unless he forgot his 
 fatigue and his thirst and hunger, and called all of his reso- 
 lution to his aid, he would not reach camp by dark. 
 
 The long afternoon slipped slowly away, and the twilight 
 fell. Booth thought that he had his bearings. He con- 
 cluded, by the appearance of the ridges, that the creek 
 where they had their camp must lay about four miles far- 
 ther. He remembered that a man can walk four miles in 
 an hour. If he would just hurry, he might reach his fire 
 in time for supper. 
 
 So he tried to increase his pace. And this was his first, 
 really tragic mistake. A wise mountaineer, no matter where 
 he is, rests when the dark comes down. 
 
 But walking in the mountains is not like walking on the 
 plains. In an hour he estimated that he had covered two 
 miles. He still kept on. The darkness grew deeper. The 
 stars came out. 
 
 Soon after ten Booth had a painful fall over a rotten log; 
 and as he lay on the ground the truth came to him. One 
 
56 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 of the things he knew was that only a tenderfoot will 
 try to find his way through the mountains in the darkness. 
 There are too many precipices to fall from — and a broken 
 leg, in his present condition, would be as deadly a situation 
 as could be imagined. But the truth that hit him hardest 
 was that he was lost, far in the mountains, and alone. 
 
 He lifted his eyes, intending to locate the Great Dipper 
 and the North Star. And it seemed to him that a black 
 shadow, as of a bird, passed close above his head. 
 
 Booth camped on the mountainside, hungry and thirsty 
 and with the beginnings of terror upon him. He heard the 
 wolves howling from the ridges. A cougar screamed as 
 it made its kill. He felt the throb and pulse of the forest life. 
 
 He did not sleep easily. He did not want his fire to 
 go out; and that meant he had to rise every hour or so 
 and put on fresh fuel. He grew cold in the dawn in spite 
 of it. 
 
 But for all these things, he felt considerably refreshed 
 when morning broke. And at once, coolly and deliberately, 
 he tried to get his bearings. He determined that his camp 
 must lie some five miles north. Morning grew to noon 
 before he finally came to the conclusion that the endless 
 ridges had bewildered him, and he had come in the wrong 
 direction. 
 
 He had found water, a spring where ferns grew, but al- 
 ready he was deeply fatigued from exertion and hunger. 
 He read his compass, again and again, until he finally knew 
 his general directions in regard to camp and civilization. 
 At three o'clock in the afternoon, he caught sight of the 
 white tip of a familiar peak — a mountain that he could not 
 possibly mistake. But he was on the wrong side of it. And 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 57 
 
 in a single instant the desperation of his own condition stared 
 him in the face. 
 
 He was endless miles from his own camp. He did not 
 know which way to turn. There was just one chance, — to 
 stride on straight west toward a certain mountain river. 
 He knew enough of the geography of the country to know 
 that if he went far enough, thirty miles perhaps, or forty, 
 he would reach those waters at last. And ranchers lived 
 along the river, — ranchers with venison hanging at their 
 doors. Life had centered down to simply a matter of find- 
 ing food enough to carry him those weary miles. 
 
 Then he shook his fist in fury, for a black shadow still 
 skimmed the sky. It was the buzzard; and still it seemed 
 to be watching him. 
 
 Only the buzzard's eyes followed him over the terrible 
 miles that ensued. They seemed to pass so slowly. The 
 ridges ever lay before him, each one a torment to his weary 
 limbs. Always there were others, when each was crossed. 
 Just as evening fell he saw his first game. Two gray squir- 
 rels romped on the topmost branches of a pine. 
 
 He did not have a chance, his first shot. In his hunger, 
 his gun fairly leaped to his shoulder. He did not even take 
 aim. Then he cursed himself. He had thought his self- 
 control was unconquerable. He took better aim the second 
 time. The squirrel he fired at took fright, and vanished 
 into the foliage. 
 
 Then he fired at the second squirrel, and again he missed. 
 He aimed endlessly the fourth shot. He knew he must not 
 miss again. The body of one squirrel would not sustain 
 him all the way. Already his strength was almost gone. 
 
 He fired again, and he screamed with delight when the 
 thing fell through the branches. But then his cry cut off 
 
58 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 quickly in his throat. For the creature was simply wounded. 
 It caught itself before ever it reached the lower limbs. In 
 an instant more it had vanished. Then, with bowed head, 
 the man went on. Two cartridges remained to bring him 
 through. 
 
 In one of the dawns that followed he expended these. A 
 deer had leaped up in his trail, and in his desperation he 
 had fired twice. He did not know that his eyes were 
 already burning blindly, and fatigue had shattered his nerves 
 beyond all hope of aiming true. Both shots were clean misses. 
 
 He stumbled on — over those terrible hills that seemed 
 never to end. He threw away his rifle. It only burdened 
 him now. The game he saw he could not procure. The 
 buzzard still watched him. It flew lower now. It seemed 
 to know, grim harbinger of death, that its hour of triumph 
 was near. Another twilight crept gray and soft over the 
 ridges. 
 
 Then Booth found himself speaking aloud. Sometimes he 
 spoke to the buzzard, the same sentence repeated end- 
 lessly. He managed to choke the words back at first. But 
 they kept coming in spite of him. And at last, as the long 
 shadows portended night, he knew that his trial was done. 
 
 His tortured body would simply on longer respond to 
 the command of his nerves. His stumbling feet no longer 
 held him up. He fell down, again and again, and each 
 time it was a harder battle to get to his feet. And what 
 did it matter, anyway? Pain would be gone from his limbs 
 before the buzzards came. The two that he loved, in the 
 valley beneath, would wait for him in vain. He was a 
 tenderfoot no more, but he had paid the price. There was 
 no use of trying further. Only food, and much of it, would 
 carry him to his destination. His rifle was gone, and the 
 
Never Kill a Porcupine 59 
 
 deer and squirrel and grouse that crossed his trail could not 
 be killed with his hands. He had lost, just as many men had 
 lost before him. The mountains had taught their lessons 
 many times before. So the thing to do was to lie still 
 — and go to sleep. 
 
 "Forgive me, wife and little child !" he spoke, with arms 
 outstretched toward the west and civilization. "I can't 
 come back. I can't try any more. There isn't a chance — 
 not one " 
 
 But just then a sound in the brush cut his words short. 
 He turned his feverish eyes. Of course it would be a deer, 
 — some easy mark if he only had gun and cartridges to 
 kill it with. It would be just some forest creature, come to 
 mock his impotence. The step came nearer, an awkward, 
 heavy step. Something came grunting, sniffing up the hill- 
 side, something that the buzzard watched. 
 
 Then it emerged in the clearing at the top of the ridge. 
 And with it there came an understanding to Chandos 
 Booth of the Indian's words at the beginning of the hunt. 
 It was Urson who had come. It was that patient, stupid 
 forest creature that never seems to matter, whose place in 
 the scheme of things only the wisest know. 
 
 The buzzard was to be cheated after all, on both of them. 
 The body of the porcupine was never to be torn by his 
 hungry beak. Its flesh was to give sustenance to the man — 
 to strengthen his muscles for the long walk back to civiliza- 
 tion. He was nearly thirty pounds of fresh meat, the only 
 animal in the forest that can be killed by a starving wanderer 
 without gun or cartridge. He had fulfilled the destiny for 
 which he had his being, the fate that the forest laws had 
 written for him, when all living things were adjudged their 
 missions and their meads. 
 
60 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Chandos Booth was not the first man that the porcupine 
 has saved in the Oregon mountains. Particularly when their 
 numbers were many, a tradition grew up among the wisest 
 of the mountain men that they were never to be killed for 
 sport, solely because so many times they had furnished food 
 to human beings, starving in the mountains. 
 
 But Booth was a man who could feel gratitude. He 
 was not content to pass on the tradition to the hunters that 
 he knew. "Long Tom, it's going to bear good fruit," he 
 said, the last night before he left the mountains. "I have 
 influence in this State. There is going to be a game law 
 passed, protecting the porcupine. Five years from now you'll 
 see 'em on every stump." 
 
 But the Indian only grunted. Such things as game laws 
 were beyond his ken. His dark eyes gazed moodily into the 
 circle of shadows about the fire, remembering an older Ore- 
 gon and more savage days. But a smile flashed at the white 
 man's face. He thought of a buzzard that was cheated, and 
 the patient Urson, whose death would prevent extinction 
 for his breed. 
 
JUNGLE JUSTICE 
 
 Sometimes the tent seems lonely at night. — From a Frontiers' 
 man's Diary. 
 
 Just where the long shoulder of Mt. McLaughlin slopes 
 down to the high plateaus, a long chain of lakes makes a 
 sort of giant's necklace of sapphires from Fish Lake down 
 into Klamath. You can hunt all day without finding them 
 on the map; yet they are notable in their way. Certain 
 clans of the tribes of water-fowl make them a rest camp on 
 their southern migrations; and these feathered nomads al- 
 ways know exactly what they are about. Besides, a few 
 bronzed old sportsmen, quiet-eyed and cool-nerved and with a 
 perfect knowledge of what is worth while in the world, come 
 from long distances to cast flies upon their waters. The 
 lake trout therein are large and fight furiously until the land- 
 ing net slides beneath them. 
 
 It is impossible to find the lakes on the map; and they 
 are not particularly easy to find in an automobile. One has 
 to go to the great Northwest of the United States, a rather 
 ample space that fills up all the country between California 
 and Canada, and take the mountain road that curls up 
 toward McLaughlin. It is best not to get off the road, for 
 one might find himself anywhere from the bottom of a preci- 
 pice to the other side of the Umpqua divide, a rugged eter- 
 nity wherein even the oldest mountaineers do not care to be 
 lost. McLaughlin is notable too, although it isn't one of 
 the greatest of western mountains. It is snow-covered, how- 
 
62 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 ever, and wonderfully symmetrical ; and it is one of the great 
 family of high peaks that keep a sort of outpost guard 
 all along the western coast. McLaughlin, which some 
 people call Mt. Pitt, has charge of the post between Mt. 
 Shasta, to the south, and the Three Sisters to the north — 
 and all the Government property in view! 
 
 Fish Lake is the first of the chain, and perhaps less inter- 
 esting than the others. Then comes sleepy, creepy old Lake- 
 of-the- Woods. Buck Lake is the third; and timber grows 
 almost down to the water's edge at Buck Lake. And since 
 Woof and his mother were born clumsy, it was quite im- 
 possible for them to go down and get a drink without 
 disturbing every one in the vicinity. Woof made more noise 
 going through a half-mile of timber than lythe Whisperfoot 
 made in his whole life. 
 
 But of course Whisperfoot was a cougar, whose very life 
 depended on being able to slide through the forest like 
 a puff from Long Tom's pipe. He had cushions on his feet, 
 and more marvelous muscle control than any physical- 
 culture expert in the world. A single broken twig, a 
 rustle of a leaf or a stir of a pebble would transform the 
 feeding deer into flying brown meteors that no cougar could 
 possibly catch. But noise didn't matter to Woof. He 
 rather liked it. The only game he sought was an occasional 
 beetle under a log; and a beetle won't run from an avalanche. 
 For Woof was simply a fuzzy, fat little black-bear cub, with 
 no hunting blood in his veins. 
 
 His lean mother led him down through the thick brush; 
 and every one on the lake had his head up to see them come. 
 Life itself, in the forests, depends on always being alert. 
 The forest creatures have no officers of the law ; or no battle- 
 ships on the sea or cannon in the forts to guard them. They 
 
Jungle Justice 63 
 
 have to depend on their own senses, every minute of every 
 hour. The step in the brush might be Woof, or it might be 
 the tramp of some human hunter, trying to go silently. So 
 when finally the brush parted at the lake shore, the flock of 
 geese that had been feeding at the water's edge were all 
 poised for flight. But at once they settled back with little 
 squawks of content. Not even the teal in the shallows 
 were afraid of Woof. 
 
 This was the first time the cub had seen the place. He 
 sat up, pointed his ears, and blinked with delight. He 
 began to wonder if he could possibly catch the waddling 
 geese on the lake margin unknowing that months were to 
 pass before he would finally conclude that he couldn't. A 
 trout, splashing from the water, suggested all sorts of pleas- 
 ing possibilities; and a horned buck, drinking a short dis- 
 tance down the shore, excited his bump of curiosity beyond 
 restraint. Woof was born with more curiosity than he could 
 ever hope to satisfy. But just then, before he was half 
 done looking, his mother cuffed him from behind and sent 
 him on his head in the sands. She meant by this that he was 
 to get his drink and go. 
 
 But Woof delayed just as long as he could. He drank 
 very slowly and pretended to have difficulty in finding clean, 
 unroiled water. He fell down two or three times, and 
 chased a gopher snake into the thickets, and bumped his 
 nose on a sharp rock, and tumbled headfirst into the water 
 and had many other adventures in even less time than a 
 man cub could have done the same. And then — at the edge 
 of the little inlet in the sand — he ran smack into the greatest 
 find of his young life. 
 
 It was a small trout, newly killed, lying in the sand. His 
 mother was too far ahead to see it. Nine chances out of ten 
 
64 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 there would have been a strangeness and a smell about it 
 that would have caused her to investigate it very carefully 
 before she laid on paws. Woof's mother, awkward and 
 fumbling though she was, knew considerable of the ways 
 of men. But little Woof was wholly without suspicion. He 
 gave a cry of pleasure and stretched out a paw. 
 
 There was a clang of metal, a terrifying leap and stir in 
 the sand; and then his pleasure sound changed to a wail of 
 fright and pain. The waterfowl leaped in the air, poised 
 and dropped again. His mother whirled, faster than the 
 forest people had ever seen her move before, and charged 
 back with a roar of anger. The mother black bear is as 
 amiable and gentle a creature as ranges the forest; but she 
 is not pleasant to meet in defense of her cub. It seemed to 
 the watching forest creatures that she covered the forty paces 
 in the time that a teal takes to leap from the water. 
 
 But when she got back to her squealing cub, the only foe 
 she could see was a steel something that the cub pulled 
 about in the sand. The jaws of it were pinched tightly 
 on the very tips of her son's toes. Woof had walked squarely 
 into one of Dong Tom's traps. 
 
 It is likely that old Black-tail, standing knee-deep in the 
 cool water, heard the sound first. He liked to stand that 
 way. The August sun had parched the woods dry, and even 
 the heavy buckbush no longer afforded a cool retreat during 
 the heat of the day. Black-tail's very life depended on 
 hearing sounds quickly and surely, — the tiniest prick of sound 
 through a half-mile of forest. His ears were trained to 
 listen for the fall of the cougar's feet on the forest leaves, and 
 ears that can hear that, can hear the death cry of an insect 
 in the air. 
 
Jungle Justice 65 
 
 He raised his antlered head and stood motionless. A 
 hush fell over the lake. The long necks of the geese came 
 up, and a mink slid softly into the water. Woof's mother 
 paused for an instant beside her cub, then turned anxious eyes 
 toward the thickets behind her. 
 
 The sound that reached them would have gone unnoticed 
 by human ears. Some one was crossing to the lake through 
 brush, some one who knew how to walk with silence. Only 
 the dry foliage permitted them to hear at all. Black-tail 
 knew perfectly that few indeed of his arch enemies, the 
 mountain men that had farms in the little valleys, were able 
 to walk so quietly. The sound grew louder; and Black-tail 
 made the shore in a single leap. He did not pause on the 
 bank. The brush seemed to leap to cover and close behind 
 him. 
 
 The wild geese do not hear particularly well; but their 
 eyes are among the keenest in the animal world. They 
 caught a glimpse of a stealing figure in the thickets ; and they 
 sprang up with a rumble and crash of wings. The she-bear 
 waited but an instant more. She called once to her cub, 
 then loped back into the brush. But she had no intention of 
 deserting her offspring for good. Such isn't the way of 
 mothers. She would simply wait until this danger had 
 passed. Then Long Tom, the trapper of the lake region, 
 stepped on the shore. 
 
 Black-tail might have congratulated himself that he got 
 out in time. Long Tom carried a rifle, and he had a way of 
 glancing for an instant down its barrel that was simply 
 death for any one at the other end. A rifle is not the gun 
 usually used for hunting waterfowl, but the geese had a 
 right to feel self-congratulatory too. Long Tom had been 
 
66 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 known to do unexpected things with the little 3030 caliber 
 in the hollow of his arm. 
 
 The other mountaineers missed sometimes. Long Tom 
 never did. They stumbled and broke twigs and fell over 
 stumps when they went through the forest. Long Tom 
 slipped through like a mid-afternoon wind. They had 
 houses; Long Tom's lair was either a hasty lean-to, or a 
 white-cornered thing that he stuck up on poles. They had 
 white skins ; Long Tom's was curiously dark. 
 
 The whole secret lay in the fact that Long Tom was an 
 Indian. He was not the kind of Indian that welfare workers 
 see on the reservations. The latter live in houses and wear 
 gay clothes; and some of them have automobiles and bad 
 habits. It was simply that when civilization was passed 
 around, Long Tom missed his portion. He didn't even own 
 a last name, but was known throughout a territory as big as 
 the State of New Jersey simply as Long Tom, with accent 
 on the Long. Though he no longer wore feathers and paint, 
 though occasionally he took his furs down and traded them 
 for supplies, he was just as much a wild Indian as he ever 
 was, just as much a native of the forest as the little black cub 
 in his pathway. 
 
 He came up close, and a curiously bright, flashing smile 
 lingered for an instant on his dusky face. "Ugh!" he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 Since the aborigines first bathed in the crimson snow on 
 the top of Mt. McLaughlin at sunset and thereby became 
 redskins, they have said "Ugh!" at anything that surprised 
 them. Even tame Indians say it yet. No one knows exactly 
 what it means — any more than any one knows what a white- 
 skin means when he says "Geewhillikins!" He stole one 
 
Jungle Justice 67 
 
 glance at the cub's paw, seeing that only the tips of its toes 
 held it in the trap. "Ugh!" he said again. 
 
 "Woof!" replied the cub. 
 
 "So that is your name?" the Indian asked in the vernacu- 
 lar. "Woof!" 
 
 "Woof!" the cub barked again, as if reassuring him on 
 this point. Then it crawled clear out to the end of its chain. 
 
 "Woof" comes as near the usual articulation of a black 
 bear as the language can express. Of course he has other 
 sounds too, whimpers and barks and whines and growls, but 
 nine times out of ten he will say "Woof," and let it go at 
 that. It means "What is that?" and "I'm hungry," and 
 "Go away," and "I'm scared," and one hundred other things. 
 The little cub said it several times more ; and then — 
 
 The word can be said in several tones of voice. The cub 
 used a frightened tone; and because a cub is never so fright- 
 ened but that he is somewhat curious as well, a rather ques- 
 tioning tone too. But just then Long Tom heard the same 
 sound, only about one hundred times louder, just behind him. 
 And this time it was neither afraid nor questioning. 
 
 "Woof!" It was simply an explosion of sound, a kind 
 of cross between a roar and a bark. Long Tom did not 
 have the unsteady nerves of white men, and he did not 
 jump at all. He simply whirled, and the rifle leaped like a 
 streak of light to his shoulder. No human eyes could have 
 traced its motion. It was cocked and ready by the time 
 his head was bent to see along the barrel. The thickets 
 parted, and a black form lunged through. In a desperate 
 effort to protect her cub, the she-bear charged full in his face. 
 
 Ordinarily a black bear is the most timid and good-natured 
 creature that can be imagined. It would sooner charge a full 
 wolf pack in winter than a man. And under ordinary con- 
 
68 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 ditions Long Tom would have rather wasted his shells on a 
 porcupine than on a black bear. No one knew better than he 
 what harmless, amiable creatures they were. But in one 
 case, the she-bear obeyed a voice that was as real as life 
 itself, as inexorable as the night falling when the day is done. 
 It was the instinct to protect her offspring, — that deep-seated 
 impulse that alone has made possible the perpetuation of 
 life. And in the other, it was simply a matter of self- 
 preservation. There was simply no other choice. 
 
 The bear fell just at the edge of the brush, softly and 
 silently and without pain. The man crept toward it, with 
 ready weapon. But it did not stir again. Then he turned 
 back to the cub, whining in the trap. 
 
 "Poor little one!" he said in his own tongue, — a tongue 
 more gentle than most people believe. "Poor little mother- 
 less! I have no furry coat to warm you, and no milk in 
 my hard breasts. But I will do my best, smallest! And 
 perhaps you will find me not so bad a father!" 
 
 For Long Tom had that sense of direct, elementary justice 
 that has long been recognized as a trait among the Indians. 
 He had slain Woof's mother; and by the laws that the 
 glaciers engraved on the mountainsides, Long Tom must 
 needs watch over the cub until it was able to take care of 
 itself. 
 
 The task of being mother of little Woof was a delight al- 
 most from the first. He had been well weaned the previous 
 month ; and this simplified matters immensely. A wet nurse 
 would have been hard to find in the Lake region. Long Tom 
 took him to his shelter, and that night they had a long talk 
 together as the stars popped one by one out of the gray 
 evening sky. 
 
 Long Tom did most of the talking; what he said is for- 
 
Jungle Justice 69 
 
 ever locked in the dark hearts of the great pines that lifted 
 their heads over his rude hut; and these grave companions 
 are never tale bearers. He was a lonely man, and most 
 of his race had long since departed to a hunting ground 
 where there are no such things as titles of land, and hunting 
 licenses, and trespass signs. The little cub licked his hand 
 with a warm tongue and cuddled in the hollow of his arm. 
 And something seemed to change and grow warm deep down 
 in this strong man's strong heart. 
 
 It is not often that an Indian smiles; but Long Tom 
 smiled then. If indeed the forest folk were watching 
 through the windows, as legend says they do, they must have 
 wondered at it. It was a peculiar upward curve of the 
 thin, firm lips, and a sudden light in the straight, dark eyes. 
 
 He talked in his own tongue, — a tongue since bastardized 
 and weakened. And the little cub had but one reply, — a 
 little "Woof" of contentment and peace. 
 
 Truly, Woof grew lonely before the night was done. 
 The hard muscles under the blanket were not like the furry 
 coat of his mother. He missed the warm tongue, the rough 
 caresses. He was a little afraid, too, when the smells and 
 the sounds of the mountain night stole in through the open- 
 ing in the lean-to. But in the morning there were fried 
 potatoes wet with canned milk, and a lump of wild honey, 
 and a big, fat flap-jack fried solely for his use; and these 
 things went a long way toward effacing the memory of his 
 mother. After a digestive nap, he was quite ready to romp. 
 
 He followed the tall form around the line of traps; and 
 Long Tom was even a better provider than his late mother. 
 He had a pleasant way of upsetting rotten logs with one 
 shove of his broad shoulders, and exposing whole armies 
 of the most tempting beetles and slugs. Then he would 
 
70 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 stand back and grunt as little Woof would tumble all over 
 himself trying to lick them all up with his red tongue. 
 And just as evening came down, they encountered a won- 
 derful thicket of the biggest, juicest huckleberries that hungry 
 bear ever spied before. 
 
 Inside of a week, Woof was firm in the belief that Long 
 Tom was his rightful and legitimate parent. He had for- 
 gotten his real mother that lay so still beside the lake. The 
 two would sit together before the lean-to in the evenings, 
 and Long Tom's pipe would glow, and little Woof would 
 grunt and whisper and beg for caresses, and play clumsy, 
 romping games with his own shadow; and then they would 
 go to sleep under the same coverlet. 
 
 And soon they needed a bigger blanket. Little Woof 
 was well fed and happy, and even the summer flowers, 
 that know they have to live a whole life of bud and leaf 
 and blossom and seed between one winter's snow and an- 
 other's, did not grow as fast as he. His joy in the fact was 
 nothing compared to Long Tom's. By now the latter was 
 convinced that he owned the prize bear in the whole wide 
 world; and he rejoiced in every added ounce of fur and 
 muscle. 
 
 Life was good, after all. As the long fall drew to 
 winter, and the various berries grew ripe and rich, and the 
 fallen leaves began to shuffle beneath his clumsy feet, just 
 to live and breathe became a delight. And when the night 
 brought its age-old return of mystery, — smells pungent and 
 strange, and the little, hushed noises of the wilderness, 
 he would simply tingle with rapture. He liked the long, 
 hard walks with his master, the meals under the pines, the 
 hours of romping and the caress of the hard hand. It was 
 a curious fact that the days seemed to pass faster for Long 
 
Jungle Justice 71 
 
 Tom, too. It is not good for a man to live alone in the 
 still hills, and little Woof was company of the rarest. The 
 man was never quite sure what he was going to do next. 
 He only knew that it would be something entirely unlooked- 
 for and original. 
 
 Long Tom permitted him the fullest freedom. After 
 the first week the hastily fabricated collar and leash were 
 taken off for good. Long Tom, free as the eagles that now 
 and then skimmed down from Eagle Ridge, knew something 
 of the value of liberty. Woof was of a free people, even 
 as he himself, and his eternal sense of justice prevented him 
 from inflicting bonds on his pet. The cub was free to go 
 at all times, yet he seemed to prefer to remain. And really 
 he had all the joys of a completely wild bear with none of 
 the disadvantages. There was nothing tame about the wild, 
 nomadic life they led from rim to rim of the Lake region. 
 
 Woof began to be glad that he did not face the winter 
 alone. Somehow, the sight of all the fallen leaves, and 
 the dying flowers, and the feel of a strange heaviness in the 
 air, began to make him afraid. Even the leaves looked 
 strange and dark, and the grass got tawny, and the wind 
 came up cold in the dawns. He began to be glad of the 
 tall, strong body that lay beside him under the coverlet. 
 By now the flight of the waterfowl had begun in earnest; 
 and the air was choked with the sad cry of the wild geese. 
 The velvet was all gone from the horns of the great buck 
 deer, and the deer themselves seemed to be filled with frenzy 
 and madness; it was mating time among the black-tails. 
 And one night the snow fell over the hills. 
 
 It vanished soon in the morning; but for all that, it 
 marked the change in the seasons. Winter had come. 
 
 Soon after this Woof beheld the slow descent of all the 
 
72 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 forest people from the lake regions to the brown foothills 
 below. Even the rodents and the poison-folk were crawling 
 away where his groping paw could not find them. One 
 night, when he wanted Long Tom to play with him, he 
 saw that his master was busy tearing down the little shelter. 
 
 "I'm going to the lower foothills," the man explained. 
 "You'd freeze your nose off if we tried to winter here." 
 
 For Long Tom had no deeds of land or cabin of logs 
 to keep him in one place. He moved with the seasons, 
 and his trail was the trail of the deer, — down in fall and 
 up in spring. 
 
 On the way they met Jim Gibbs, a trapper that lived 
 in the Fish Lake region. Neither of them particularly 
 cared about him. Long Tom, a just man to the last drop 
 in his veins, had always tried to overcome the feeling of 
 distrust that he had for him; and his greeting was friendly. 
 He tried to disregard the fact that more than once Gibbs 
 had broken the trapper's law and trespassed on Long Tom's 
 own trapping ground. But of course Gibbs was a white 
 man, and he did not understand the law of trap and tribe. 
 
 But little Woof felt no restraining influences. He knew 
 little of manners and less of conventions that make the re- 
 lations of human beings so inexplicable to the forest folk, 
 and he had no principles whatever except fairness to his 
 master and self-preservation; so he made no effort at all 
 to be polite to Gibbs. He didn't like the way Gibbs looked 
 at him. It was the same look that had burned from the 
 eyes of the cougar, one night when it had slain a deer 
 in the Dark Glen. 
 
 So Woof didn't look twice at Gibbs. But he was very 
 much interested indeed in the pet that followed at Gibbs' 
 heels. He had to look a long time before he could make 
 
Jungle Justice 73 
 
 him out; and then concluded that he must be a strange kind 
 of bear cub. 
 
 Gibbs' pet was interested too; and he also fell to con- 
 jecturing what manner of creature this little, black, fuzzy, 
 four-legged beast might be. And equally erroneously, he 
 concluded that he must be some new kind of dog. They 
 came up to make friends. 
 
 Woof immediately sat down. When he was particularly 
 interested, he always sat down. And the little dog could 
 not understand this action at all. He was quite unable to 
 sit down in just this way himself, and the whole proceed- 
 ing mystified him beyond words. But taking heart, he 
 came close and tried to introduce himself in the way ac- 
 cepted among dogs. 
 
 He wasn't quite sure what happened after that. He was 
 quite vividly aware that the bear had reached down and 
 cuffed him — once with each paw — and rolled him over back- 
 wards. And not till then, when he heard the two men bel- 
 lowing with laughter, did he conclude that he must have 
 been mistaken in thinking Woof a dog. Dogs, he well knew, 
 had better manners. 
 
 They parted soon, and Long Tom headed the way down 
 the long trail. He was quite unaware that Gibbs looked 
 after him until a shoulder of the hill hid him from sight 
 — an odd look of speculation and greed on his heavy face. 
 
 Hibernating in the winter is simply a matter of the lesser 
 of two evils with the bears. When life is good and their 
 stomachs full, three months of sleep doesn't appeal to them 
 at all. Life is too short, and the fun of living much too 
 keen for a happy bear to do this sort of thing from choice. 
 They would much rather be prowling about on the hill- 
 
74 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 sides, grunting at the deer, and unearthing beetles, and 
 shuffling leaves and scratching fleas. 
 
 But there is no other alternative. The deer all go down 
 to the foothills in winter. The beetles bury under the 
 ground, and the shuffling leaves are all covered with snow. 
 There aren't even any fleas left to scratch. The bears are 
 sociable animals, and they don't like to have the big dead 
 mountains all to themselves. Moreover, the business of 
 making a living becomes extremely difficult. Even the 
 acorns are snow-covered. So they simply make the best of 
 a bad job, find some cozy nook or rocky cavern and sleep 
 till spring. 
 
 In this regard they are entire different from their su- 
 periors, the men that come up from the valleys to hunt. 
 When the latter are out of food and lost from their own 
 kind, or when a blizzard suddenly breaks down upon them 
 like a scourge, they do not make a snug snow-house and rest 
 till the danger is past. They are more likely to start run- 
 ning — in a perfect circle. And soon after this search parties 
 scour the hills for the form of something huddled and 
 strange in a snowdrift. 
 
 Woof had a strong, tall man to look after him; so the 
 thought of hibernating did not even enter his head. The two 
 spent the winter on the lower foothills — lovely, green slopes 
 where the snow only came at long intervals and melted 
 quickly. He liked the cold dawns, the tiring tramps 
 over the trap lines, the wind and the winter stars. He 
 liked to climb to the top of a great pine and have a de- 
 licious swinging game all by himself. And by now he had 
 learned most of the lessons that the wild bears know, — 
 lessons in bread-winning to sustain him if anything ever 
 
Jungle Justice 75 
 
 happened to Long Tom. Things do happen to people, quite 
 often, in the mountains. 
 
 Among other things, Woof learned to be an expert fisher- 
 man. Bears do not use hook and line. They crawl out 
 into the riffles and simply wait. The art in it lies in being 
 able to stand perfectly still, so not even a shadow flickers 
 on the water. The salmon do not have very sharp eyes. 
 The black shape in the shallows, unmoving, does not even at- 
 tract their attention. They swim on, in their endless up- 
 stream journey. The Indians say that the secret of life is 
 to be seen in the lives of the salmon, — a long climb until 
 death ! All at once something that is too fast for the human 
 eye to follow scoops down at them. Curved claws catch 
 them and hurl them to the bank. And Woof, with a ten- 
 pound steelhead trout in his stomach, was the happiest crea- 
 ture alive. 
 
 But Woof preferred berries and acorns and vegetables. 
 In the way of meat, he liked beetles and slugs and an oc- 
 casional toad. It was always an exciting game to get into 
 Long Tom's grub box, and one day he got his head caught 
 in it. This was circumstantial evidence that even such a 
 just Indian as Long Tom could not question. So he soberly 
 cut a switch and inflicted it when Woof was helpless. 
 
 Spring came at last; and Woof was a yearling. They 
 headed together back into the higher hills. Spring drew 
 to summer, and life was perfect beyond all dreams. In the 
 last days of August a man on horseback brought a letter 
 to Long Tom. 
 
 "You will have to read it to me," Long Tom told him. 
 
 With an apprehensive eye on the bear, the white man read 
 the letter. It was from the court in the valley below, and 
 it turned out to be a command for Long Tom to leave 
 
76 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 his mountain home for a week and attend to some legal 
 business. Because Long Tom was an Indian, the Govern- 
 ment felt it had to look after him. 
 
 "But what shall I do with Woof?" he asked in the ver- 
 nacular. 
 
 The only word that the white man caught was the last one, 
 but he interpreted amazingly well. He hadn't even known 
 that the bear's name was Woof. Perhaps he was an im- 
 aginative man, or perhaps he was simply thinking about the 
 bear all the time. For his answer came pat. 
 
 "Take him with you, and sell him to the circus that is 
 coming through the valley in three days." 
 
 Long Tom didn't consider this suggestion worthy of a 
 reply. At once he began to make preparations for de- 
 parture. He got out Woof's collar and chain, and tied 
 him securely to a little pine tree in front of the tent. 
 "Worthless!" he said gently, coming back to take the bear's 
 muzzle in his palm. "Go back, furry robber of grub boxes. 
 Your master is called away to the white man's court be- 
 low; and you, little wicked, must stay here. But I will 
 return soon. And then, Woof, you and I will see what 
 country lies about Squaw Lake." 
 
 If Woof could have understood, his little brown eyes 
 would have glittered with delight. He loved strange re- 
 gions and new rivers, long climbs to unknown peaks, and 
 stealing searches through the unsurveyed. But he howled 
 mournfully when Long Tom vanished down the trail. 
 
 On his way down, Long Tom made a satisfactory ar- 
 rangement with Jim Gibbs, — by which, for a certain beaver 
 skin, Gibbs was to care for Woof during the Indian's ab- 
 sence. He was to come in the morning and make him a 
 
Jungle Justice 77 
 
 flapjack, and in the afternoon take him for an hour's ramble 
 through the berry thickets. 
 
 "So you're goin' for a whole week?" Gibbs murmured,, 
 when their talk was done. He eyes seemed to grow spec- 
 ulative, then wandered to an empty whisky flask on 
 his grub box. Gibbs knew perfectly that many things could 
 be accomplished in a week. 
 
 In reality the work of the court took ten days. They 
 seemed like ten months to Long Tom. He couldn't sleep 
 in the hotel bed at all, for the first few nights. He did 
 manage to attain some rest in the grass of the park. On 
 the eleventh day he did not even wait for dawn, to start 
 back into the hills. And he rejoiced at every mile that 
 streamed beneath him. 
 
 Evening was falling when at last Long Tom came in 
 sight of his own tent. But at the first glance something 
 seemed changed about it. It did seem so curiously silent 
 and deserted. He could not understand at first. Why was 
 Woof not roaring a welcome to his sound and smell on the 
 wind? He sprinted the last hundred yards — and then he 
 stopped dead in his tracks. 
 
 Woof was gone. The chain was broken off squarely, a 
 few inches from the tree. 
 
 "Maybe Gibbs has got him," the Indian muttered. 
 "Maybe he's feeding him in the thickets." Yet he knew 
 that he lied as he said it. Gibbs would not have broken 
 the chain to lead the bear to the berry fields. He started 
 back, running, toward Gibbs' cabin. 
 
 He met the man at the river, his rifle in the hollow 
 of his arm. Gibbs wore a new pair of boots; his eyes were 
 bloodshot and strange. His hip bulged with a large flask, 
 and it was almost empty, too. 
 
78 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "He was there this morning," Gibbs told him when he 
 had heard the story. "I tended him more'n a week, for the 
 beaver skin you promised. He must have broken his chain 
 and went wild." 
 
 Soon after this the Indian went alone back to his tent. 
 He sat down on his bed of fir boughs and looked a long 
 time into the graying horizon. "The tent is empty," said 
 the wind that swept in about him from the hills. He heard 
 it plainly. It swished at the canvas. "The tent is so large 
 — and empty." 
 
 The blanket seemed much too large as he drew it over 
 him. The night was chill, too. "Come back, little cub," 
 the pine trees murmured over his head. He was an Indian, 
 and he understood them well. "Come back, little cub — for 
 the tent seems empty and my bed is cold." 
 
 The Indian always remembers. It was a peculiar thing, 
 learned by frontiersmen long ago, that the Indian seems 
 unable to forget. He cannot forget an injury, and there are 
 many unpleasant legends that prove this fact. He never 
 forgets an enemy, and men who have had hard work to 
 remember a savage face peering from behind the sights of 
 a rifle have learned this lesson very dearly. And to their 
 friends, to those who have won their deep, dark sort of 
 love, they are simply faithful to the death. 
 
 Most white men would have forgotten little Woof. Even 
 a mountaineer, bred in a land where all emotions are simple 
 and intense, would probably not have missed him after the 
 first few weeks. But it was not this way with Long Tom. 
 The sun never rose and the stars never burned in the sky 
 when he did not feel his pet's absence. 
 
 The first few days he had simply hunted far and wide, 
 and called from the hilltops. Then his crafty Indian brain 
 
Jungle Justice 79 
 
 began to work. He went back to his tent and hunted for 
 clues. And he knew perfectly, at the first glance, that Gibbs 
 had told him one lie at least. Woof had not broken away 
 the very day of Long Tom's return. The spoor was too 
 old. Evidently the escape was made within three days 
 after his departure. 
 
 Then he examined the chain. The broken ends were 
 oddly flattened out. A mere straight pull could not have 
 done this. They looked as if they had been broken with a 
 hammer. And then Long Tom sat down on his cot to think. 
 
 His first impulse was to go and lie beside the river, his 
 rifle in the hollow of his arm. Jim Gibbs would come by, 
 soon. Nor did Long Tom ever miss, once he saw his game 
 along the barrel of his rifle. But perhaps it was better to 
 wait. He was a mountain man; and long ago he had 
 learned to wait with patience and fortitude. Besides, jus- 
 tice might be obtained in a more fitting manner. 
 
 Soon after this he made an expedition down into the foot- 
 hills. He questioned a few people, and the questions led 
 him even to the town in the valley. One day he talked 
 to a newspaper reporter; and reporters have a way of know- 
 ing all things. After that, Long Tom went back quietly 
 to his tent in the hills — to wait until a certain circus should 
 come again. 
 
 "It comes every summer," the newspaper man had told 
 him. "And the year will pass quickly." 
 
 In this the reporter was mistaken. The year did not 
 go particularly fast for either Long Tom or his pet. One 
 waited in a shelter in the hills, watching his traps and listen- 
 ing to the voices of the lonely wind. They still talked to 
 him. The pine trees had the same voices. He beheld the 
 leaves fall, one by one, revealing the end of autumn; and 
 
80 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 he wanted to shake the rest of them from the tree. He saw 
 the flowers pass; and his thoughts sped their departure. The 
 winter months dragged to spring, and never did the snow 
 seem to melt so slowly. And the spring, always before 
 passing much too swiftly, seemed longer than a lifetime 
 itself. 
 
 To little Woof, the seasons seemed all the same. He 
 had forgotten that the stars were white and sharp in win- 
 ter, and warm and soft in spring. He had forgotten that 
 there were such things as stars. All things had ceased to 
 matter ; and only the wind sometimes blew to him a memory 
 of what was past. The circus men said that he was always 
 restless when the wind blew. But they did not know why. 
 He would make a thousand journeys up and down his cage ; 
 and at such times he didn't seem to know his trainer. 
 
 He could not even bury in the snow, and forget his bars 
 and the rumbling wheels and the sawdust smell. He could 
 only pace back and forth, regularly as a pendulum swing- 
 ing from a clock, until even his trainers began to wonder 
 at him. Mostly they were kind to him, but all the kind- 
 ness in the world could not make up for the chains he wore 
 and the bars that inclosed him. He was altogether in- 
 different to their kindnesses. He went through his tricks 
 at their command, wholly and entirely bored by the crowds 
 that cheered him. He wanted the old times back again, 
 the mystery and the silence, the smells and sounds and dan- 
 gers. He longed for the rough love and the rough games. 
 He did not even know when summer came. 
 
 But one night the trainers noticed he seemed more rest- 
 less than ever. They had come back to a certain valley in 
 southern Oregon, the same place they had played the year 
 before. There was a cool wind blowing in from the hills, 
 
Jungle Justice 81 
 
 and at the first breath Woof suddenly stood upright in 
 his cage. Then he charged full at the bars, hurling his 
 weight against them. 
 
 "It's mighty plain to me," the trainer said, when he came 
 to quiet him. "This is Woof's own country. We bought 
 him from that hill-billy Gibbs almost a year ago — in this 
 very town." 
 
 But it was no easy task to quiet Woof. The madness 
 was upon him. He flung himself again and again against 
 the bars. His spirit was broken, and the indifference of 
 despair had all at once given way to a desperate resolve to 
 escape or die. 
 
 The full-grown black bear that shared his cage retired 
 to a corner. He was the crossest, surliest animal in the 
 circus, and ordinarily he liked to bully the two-year-old. 
 But it was noticeable that he remained discreetly polite to- 
 day. Woof was in a fighting mood. 
 
 The crowds filed into the animal tent, but Woof did not 
 even glance at them. They laughed at him awhile. Then 
 they drifted on into the main tent and left him to his rage. 
 
 But all at once he stopped short. His savage bark cut 
 off sharp after a single syllable. The animal tent was 
 deserted by trainers and crowds alike; so there were no 
 spectators to wonder at him. All of them were busy ini 
 the main tent. The bear stood like a form in metal, ears 
 cocked forward, scarcely breathing. 
 
 It was just a smell at first, — a smell that swept him back 
 twelve months of time in a single breath. Then it was a 
 sound of footsteps on the sawdust, — the sound of some one 
 creeping close to the canvas wall. And even before he 
 saw the dark face at the bars, Woof knew who had come. 
 
 It was Long Tom, his master of long ago. It was the 
 
82 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 same dusky face, the same dark eyes and tall form. It 
 was the same voice, whispering in the same, never-to-be- 
 forgotten tone of command. "Woof," the man said. "Be 
 quiet, Woof! I've come to get you." 
 
 He spoke in his own language; but the bear seemed to 
 understand. "Be quiet, Woof," he warned again. But 
 Woof could not be quiet. With a bellow that frightened 
 the deer in their pens, he roared out his welcome, and 
 flung himself in rapture against the bars. 
 
 Long Tom laid his plans carefully, and he did not make 
 a false step. He had but one ally, — a newspaper man with 
 whom he had talked a year before. Perhaps the latter took 
 a real interest in the Indian's attempt to get back his stolen 
 pet. Perhaps he simply wanted a story. 
 
 Night had come down, and the oil lamps danced when 
 Long Tom met Gibbs on the circus grounds. He had known 
 Gibbs would come. The mountain folk never missed a 
 circus. Gibbs had been somewhat apprehensive all day, for 
 fear that Long Tom would recognize his pet; but it seemed 
 that the Indian had forgotten. Gibbs had never seen him 
 so affable. If he had been a wiser mountaineer, he would 
 have been suspicious at once. Indians are rarely affable 
 unless there is something in the wind. 
 
 "Firewater," Long Tom said simply. He pointed to 
 a curious bulge at his hip. It was the one thing that Gibbs 
 felt he needed to complete a perfect day. He had seen the 
 circus and the side shows, and he had paid his last quarter 
 for a rather disappointing device called "Patrick at the Key- 
 hole." He did not object at all to a quarter-mile walk 
 down the railroad track to a secluded spot. And there they 
 found the reporter, waiting in the darkness. 
 
 It can be said that the latter had no hand in the rather 
 
Jungle Justice 83 
 
 rough-and-tumble work that ensued. He did enjoy it, how- 
 ever. He even went so far as to emit a small, shrill cry 
 of encouragement when the real business of the evening 
 actually began. This started with Long Tom suddenly in- 
 flicting a little six-inch jolt with his fist, squarely on the 
 point of Gibbs' chin. 
 
 Human beings are not constructed to stand up well under 
 a blow like this. It can be relied on just as confidently as a 
 drop of laudanum or a breath of chloroform, and its effect 
 is just as certain. It was not a particularly violent blow. 
 It was very short and very cool and remarkably efficient. A 
 large number of the stars began to fall out of the sky and 
 whiz and streak before Gibbs' eyes. He wasn't quite sure 
 what happened for a minute or two thereafter. When he 
 did open his eyes again, his hands were tied tight behind 
 him, his feet were pinioned, and a soft cloth absolutely pro- 
 hibited any sound. 
 
 It was then that terror came upon him. It wasn't as if 
 the Indian were blind and wild with wrath. Gibbs knew 
 fairly well what could be expected of a man in wrath, — 
 a few such things as blows and kicks that would certainly 
 do no more than send him to the hospital. But the dark 
 face before him was perfectly grave, perfectly inscrutable 
 and impassive. He did not seem to be angry at all, just 
 cold and sure and just. The handkerchief in his mouth was 
 new and white, bought, in fact, for the occasion ; and Gibbs' 
 skin faded to almost the same shade. His throat muscles 
 contracted for a scream; but not a sound came out. 
 
 The Indian put him across his shoulders and carried him 
 to the open door of the freight car. He didn't seem to 
 feel the weight at all. And from the deep shadows of the 
 car, growling, savage voices came out to them. 
 
84 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Gibbs was struggling now, every inch of his cold skin 
 creeping with terror. It seemed such a ghastly business. 
 He only knew that wild animals of some kind were waiting 
 in the car, and this impassive red man was carrying him in 
 to them. He was altogether powerless in his grasp. Long 
 Tom seemed scarcely aware that the man was struggling. 
 
 It all went like clockwork. The reporter had done his 
 part. Time was when he had traveled with a circus, and 
 he knew just what to do. He stood ready, at the door 
 of an iron cage in the darkness of the car. There were 
 living creatures in the cage, — beasts that flung against the 
 cars and roared and growled. Gibbs was too frightened to 
 distinguish the friendly, welcoming roars of one of the 
 creatures from the angry grunting of the other. He only 
 knew that some high justice, immutable as the stars, had 
 fallen upon him at last. 
 
 The reporter opened the cage door, and one of the dark 
 figures bounded through. Woof had needed no urging. 
 He was back to his own at last. The Indian lifted Gibbs 
 from his back and set him on his feet, facing the cage. He 
 slipped one of his strong arms behind the elbows, just above 
 the pinioned hands. Then, while the reporter with one 
 motion severed the bonds, the Indian thrust him through 
 the cage door into Woof's place. 
 
 "Good God, Tom!" the man yelled, when he could snatch 
 off his gag. "Are you goin' to leave me here to be et up?" 
 
 For the door had swung shut after him, and Woof's com- 
 panion was growling like forty demons in the corner. Per- 
 haps the reporter laughed in the darkness, — Woof's roars 
 mostly obscured the sound. Long Tom looked closely at the 
 lock of the cage door before he answered. It was a most 
 
Jungle Justice 85 
 
 satisfactory lock, one that could not possibly be worked 
 from within. "Turn about — fair play," he grunted gravely. 
 
 Then they went away and left him, howling in the cage. 
 
 Certain gray old circus men, traveling up and down the 
 long lanes of the world, have one story that they particularly 
 love to tell. It concerns how certain of them went to one 
 of the animal cars in the gray of dawn and found Jim 
 Gibbs, almost petrified with fright, in the bear cage. Of 
 course he was unhurt. Spending a night in the same cage 
 with a black bear may be a most uncomfortable proceeding, 
 but barring accidents, it is no more dangerous than spending 
 the same length of time in jail. And although Gibbs threat- 
 ened all manner of suits, the circus men only rolled around 
 on the ground and laughed at him. Moreover they told 
 him that they would answer his charge with an indictment 
 for selling stolen property; for the reporter had written a 
 cracking good story for his daily that explained the whole 
 matter and left Gibbs without a case. 
 
 It is doubtful if Long Tom and his pet ever saw the story. 
 But they did see the pines and the waters, which was really 
 better. And their tent seems no longer large and empty. 
 The call of the pine trees has ceased to be plaintive and 
 sad in Long Tom's ears. Sleeping together, under the 
 same warm blankets, it's a cruel wind or a cold snow that 
 can chill or harm them. 
 
SHAG OF THE PACKS 
 
 Just who is the ultimate authority in the southern Oregon 
 forests is a question that has never been settled. It is really 
 an important matter. Most naturalists disagree with one 
 another, and it is likely that the forest folk — the creatures of 
 talon and paw and wing — disagree among themselves. It 
 does very well to say in the abstract that the lion is the recog- 
 nized king of beasts, but if his dominion has spread to the 
 forests of the lake region it is yet to be discovered. There 
 are several of the larger animals that would likely question 
 his sovereignty. 
 
 For instance, there are the bears. It is hard to imagine 
 old Woof being bossed around by any one. He has an inde- 
 pendent spirit, and except from human beings that really 
 don't count, a bear will not run from any living creature. 
 But while he doesn't intend to be ruled, he is much too 
 lazy and amiable and forgetful to try to rule any one 
 else. No one in his right senses could really call Woof the 
 forest king. 
 
 Any naturalist who has seen a cougar stretch out 
 luxuriously on the great, gnarled limb of a tree might be 
 inclined to think that he has aspirations for the sovereignty. 
 If grace and agility and cruelty could make a king, it would 
 not be necessary to look any further than Whisperfoot. He 
 has the same sharp talons and gleaming fangs of his cousin 
 the lion; he has the terrible, sinuous, resistless strength of 
 the felines; and he is one of the largest of the Oregon wild 
 
Shag of the Packs 87 
 
 animals. But there is one rather serious difficulty. The 
 cougar is graceful and stately as long as there is nothing more 
 dangerous than a fawn or a porcupine in sight. A ten- 
 pound terrier can usually tree him in a minute. 
 
 The elk is the largest creature in the Oregon mountains 
 and seemingly has every trait of the monarch. No one who 
 has beheld his stately tread in the fighting days of fall can 
 believe otherwise. No crown of gold was ever more won- 
 derful than the many-tined antlers that sweep out from 
 the beautiful head, and not even a cougar's talons are better 
 weapons than those razor-edged front hoofs of the great 
 elk bull. It is a powerful cougar who will care to attack 
 an elk alone. The latter has a way of getting him beneath 
 his hoofs and churning back and forth, about as deadly a 
 proceeding as a cougar ever encounters. The elk have a far- 
 ringing, triumphant call that is kingly in itself, and really 
 they are the most noble of the whole deer tribe. Of course, 
 they aren't as large as the European Elk, which is really 
 a blood brother to America's moose; but they are true stags 
 with none of the latter's awkwardness and general un- 
 gainliness. 
 
 Then there are the lesser aspirants, the poison people in 
 particular. Every beast in the forest — even the elk — turns 
 from his trail rather than tread on Loose-fang. And the 
 buzzard that glides all day on his motionless wings has 
 even a stronger claim than the rattlesnake. "All things 
 come to me in the end," the buzzard boasts to his fledglings. 
 He means he is the carrion eater of the forest, and thus 
 he is the ultimate conqueror of all things. 
 
 But when all is said and done, there remain the wolves. 
 There is an old legend in the forest that they were the 
 first people, and it is certain that they will be the last to go. 
 
 it 
 
88 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Wherever naturalists have gone, into the most trackless 
 wildernesses or the most remote prairies, there have always 
 been wolves. They were here in the beginning, and they will 
 stay to the end. As long as the forest endures, the packs 
 will flourish. No systematic hunting, not trap nor poison 
 nor gun, can completely conquer them. They have the right 
 proportion of cunning and cowardice and frenzied bravery 
 to win in the struggle for existence, and this is only one 
 of the reasons why, after all, perhaps the wolves are the 
 real heart and soul and rulers of the wilderness. 
 
 It is true that the wolf pack is the single, greatest hunting 
 machine in the whole wild world. No individual creature, 
 except a strong man with an unerring rifle, can hope to 
 stand against it. Woe to the stately elk on whose track 
 the wolf pack sings in winter! In the desperation of their 
 hunger, even old Woof is not safe from them. No snow is 
 deep enough, no cold sufficiently severe, or no land so terrible 
 and bleak that the wolf pack can be entirely conquered. They 
 go to the barren reaches of the poles, and when all the other 
 forest creatures have migrated south or buried in the snow, 
 they range the wintry mountains alone. 
 
 To know the wolves from fang to tail, goes an old 
 saying, is to know the forest. They typify the wilderness 
 above all other living things. They are its symbol and sign, 
 eternal as the pines themselves; moody as the forests and 
 deadly as the snows. The strength of the mountains is the 
 strength of the pack, — remorseless, unconquered, resistless. 
 And the song that the wailing wolf pack sings in the winter 
 nights is the very voice and articulation of the wilderness, 
 note for note and sound for sound, — sad beyond all measure- 
 ment and wild past all power of words to tell. 
 
 It is not that the wolves have any commendable qualities. 
 
Shag of the Packs 89 
 
 A lone wolf is a distressing coward. The whole breed is 
 hated and feared wherever men have gone. The only war 
 that is known, in Lapland, is the war against the wolves. 
 But their vices only make them more typical of the wilder- 
 ness. They are treacherous, but so is a mountain trail. They 
 are stealthy, but whoever has heard the wind creeping 
 through the pine tops at night knows that it is stealthy, too. 
 They are silent and full of cunning. And, above all things, 
 they are imbued with that terrible remorselessness of the 
 wilderness, — a merciless savagery that, once met, never is 
 forgotten. 
 
 There are plenty of reasons why, in folklore, the wolf has 
 always been thought of as some gray demon of the snow, the 
 very antithesis of all that is dear and true in life. Only in 
 the far remote past, in certain pagan tribes where cruelty 
 was virtue, have the wolves ever been regarded with any- 
 thing but hatred and terror. They are the one breed of 
 all the higher creatures that will ruthlessly commit canni- 
 balism on their mates. They are one of the few breeds that 
 seems to have no pack rule against the killing of men. They 
 lack the beauty of the deer, the intellect of the elephant, 
 the faithfulness of the dog or horse. They have only 
 their savage cunning, their relentless cruelty, and their old 
 degenerate creed that has always been the direct opposite to 
 the creed of civilization, — that no mercy or justice or moral 
 issue must stand between them and their survival. They 
 have a strange, merciless hatred for their cousins, the dogs; 
 and most naturalists have wondered why. Perhaps it is 
 just the hatred that dark angels have always had for the 
 bright, — because the dogs have given their love and services 
 to men. 
 
 And while this is the story of the wolf pack, it is also 
 
90 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 the story of Shag, the shepherd with the strain of a greater 
 breed. It is the tale of the wolf pack's law, and a higher 
 law that has fallen, whence no man knows, to show the way 
 in the upward climb of man and beast. 
 
 Silas Lennox had a calendar hung on the white walls 
 of his cabin; but he didn't need its word to know that the 
 month was May. He was rather like the beasts, in this re- 
 spect. He had lived long enough in the forest to know the 
 sign and mark of every change in the seasons. 
 
 The wild creatures that lived in the mountains about his 
 cabin never saw a calendar from their life's beginning to 
 its end ; but yet they never made any mistake about the sea- 
 sons. The very faces of the mountains were calendars to 
 them. In the summer these were rather tawny and parched, 
 and the rivers dwindled and dried up, and there was a 
 smell of seasonal flowers and drying marshes and sunbaked 
 earth. The twigs got so dry and brittle that they sometimes 
 could hear even Whisperfoot, the cougar, as he stole up the 
 deer trails ; and, as a rule, Whisperfoot makes about as much 
 noise as the stars when they pop through the twilight sky. 
 In the fall the mountains were golden and hazy and still, and 
 if this wasn't sign enough, the sight of old Woof, the bear, 
 gorging and sleeping alternately in the berry thickets, would 
 indicate the reason quite unmistakably. 
 
 The smells are always particularly mysterious in the fall. 
 Some of them, such as those that call the wolves to the 
 pack and the deer to the herd, are quite impossible for 
 human beings to perceive. In the winter all smells are ob- 
 literated; but there are plenty of other signs of the season. 
 
Shag of the Packs 91 
 
 There is the snow, endless and wan in the moonlight, bowing 
 down the fir limbs until it seems impossible that they could 
 ever come straight again; and the far-carrying cry of the 
 wolf pack. No one could possibly mistake that cry for 
 the yell that the pack utters when the wolves first congre- 
 gate in the fall. The latter cry is rather triumphant, simply 
 charged with the new sense of might that their numbers give 
 them. But the song saddens as the winter advances. And 
 at last the pack begins to sing about a certain grim and 
 terrible spirit that walks over the ever-deepening snow, and 
 which makes himself particularly well known to the wolves. 
 He is Starvation, and once to hear the wild, sad song that is 
 made to him is to remember it until death. When Lennox 
 heard it, he always knew that winter had come in earnest. 
 Naturalist and hunter and mountaineer, he had come to 
 know the mountains almost as well as the forest creatures 
 themselves. 
 
 Now it was May, and the signs were everywhere. The 
 snow was melting on the lower levels, quaint little modest 
 mountain flowers were blossoming in the young grass and 
 blowing everywhere the faintest, most delightful perfume that 
 could be imagined. The whole forest life was wakening: 
 birds from the south and rodents from the ground and even 
 old Woof out of his cavern in the snowdrifts. Likely he 
 was puzzled by the aspect of nature. It had been all white 
 and cold when he had gone to sleep. Now it was green 
 and fragrant and inviting. But as life was just one long 
 puzzle to Woof from beginning to end, as it is to all really 
 philosophical people, he forgot it speedily and shuffled away 
 to hunt grubs. 
 
 But of all the signs of spring, there was none more 
 evident than a certain miracle that had occurred in Lennox's 
 
92 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 woodshed, not five days before. All over the mountain 
 realm, this same miracle was occurring daily. Everywhere 
 the females of the several species were leaving their herds 
 or their packs, and stealing away into the thickets. The 
 young of the forest folk are all born in spring, and the 
 shepherd's litter had not been an exception. Four little, 
 ratlike creatures lay huddled together on one of Lennox's 
 old coats, and even now they were whimpering for their 
 mother's return. 
 
 And, curiously, Lennox himself was waiting for the same 
 thing. The shepherd did not usually stay out on the hills 
 after night-fall. There were certain good reasons why, 
 among them the particular prevalence of wolves. She had 
 disappeared just before twilight, evidently on one of her 
 rambling excursions through the mountains. Darkness had 
 come down, fleet and mysterious as ever, and she had not yet 
 returned. 
 
 Lennox stood at his cottage threshold, his quiet eyes 
 intent on the forests that stretched in front. Only a faint 
 glimmer lingered in the west. He could see the profile of dis- 
 tant pines against the sky line; and the light from his cabin 
 door died quickly in the shadows. He was not quite alone. 
 A woman worked about the cookstove, and a little girl, per- 
 haps eleven years old, stood fumbling at his hands. 
 
 The silence of the mountains depends entirely on how 
 intently one listens. Sometimes, to the casual ear, they seem 
 absolutely silent. And this is a silence not soon to be for- 
 gotten, in which no leaf stirs or wind whispers; and at 
 such times it is some way vaguely distressing to hear the 
 pronounced stir and beat of one's own pulse. But, listening 
 keenly, sometimes other sounds can be heard, usually at long 
 intervals and so faint that one can never be quite sure of their 
 
Shag of the Packs 93 
 
 reality. They do not in the least destroy the effect of 
 absolute silence. They seem rather to accentuate it, — the 
 faint snap of a footstep on a dry twig, the rustle of a wing, 
 or the stir of a rodent. Lennox's ears were keen, and it 
 seemed to him that the darkness was vibrant and poignant 
 with such little, hushed sounds. 
 
 They didn't mar the fine edge of his nerve. He was 
 used to them. But at the same time he was rapidly growing 
 apprehensive as to the fate of his shepherd dog. 
 
 A few minutes before he had heard the timber wolves 
 at their hunting. Their numbers were evidently few, merely 
 the remainder of the pack that had not yet broken up, con- 
 sisting of a few young males and barren females. As usual, 
 he had been able to distinguish four or five separate tones, in- 
 dicating at least that many animals. They had found some 
 kind of game on the ridge ; and Lennox was perfectly aware 
 that he had likely seen his pet for the last time. The cries 
 he had heard had been the piercing barks of a fighting pack, 
 and that fact meant either they had encountered a cougar 
 or a bear, or else had attacked his shepherd. Deer, the 
 usual game of wolves, do not necessitate a fight. Bear and 
 cougar are rarely attacked except when the pack is starving. 
 A dog, however, is always — except possibly a slut in the 
 rutting season — fair game to the wolf pack. 
 
 He had always depended on the dog's speed to protect her 
 from the wolves. It was true that they could wear her out in 
 a long chase, but under most conditions she would have 
 been able to reach the cottage in safety. He wondered if she 
 had been taken by surprise or surrounded. 
 
 "The puppies are whimpering," his daughter told him. 
 "They're hungry for their supper." 
 
 He looked down at her with a singularly sweet smile. 
 
94 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 It would have surprised an onlooker. The stern face of the 
 mountaineer had not seemed capable of such lightning change 
 in expression. 
 
 "And only Shep can give it to them, too," her father an- 
 swered. He knew perfectly that by no conceivable cir- 
 cumstances, if the shepherd were killed, could he hope to save 
 the litter. He lived as much alone as the Innuits in the 
 Arctic, and there was no milk for the whimpering pups. 
 
 But at that instant, the child clapped its hands. She 
 saw the form of a dog stealing toward them out of the 
 shadows. Then both of them stiffened. Shep had come 
 home, but both of them knew at the same instant that she 
 had only come home to die. 
 
 It is a curious instinct that causes all living creatures to 
 seek shelter in their final hour. Soldiers had observed this 
 phenomenon too many times for a possibility of a mistake. 
 Perhaps it is an instinct having its source in the young days 
 of the race, — a last effort to protect the lifeless body from 
 the wild things of the field. It is the same impulse that 
 causes a wounded soldier to creep under the scantiest bush for 
 his last breath. At first, in the dim light, Shep seemed to 
 be stealing along with belly close to the ground, after the 
 manner of a stalking animal. But when she came close, 
 the girl hid her face. 
 
 Shep had met the pack on the ridge; and, although her 
 swift legs had enabled her to escape from them, she had been 
 mortally wounded. A savage bite had torn at one of the 
 great veins in the shoulder. "Shep! Old Shep!" the moun- 
 taineer whispered, as he bent over the shuddering form. 
 The emotions of the mountain men are primitive and deep. 
 Lennox had loved his dog as he had his own family. And 
 
Shag of the Packs 95 
 
 her loss meant the death of the whelps, too. And it is not 
 good to live in the mountains without a dog. 
 
 For a little while he stood staring into the darkness, his 
 dark features intent. But in a moment, he laughed at his 
 own folly. If any of the mountain men of his neighborhood 
 had killed his dog there would have been debts to pay. But 
 no vengeance could be taken from the creatures of the wild. 
 In the first place, the range was inhabited by a thousand 
 wolves, any one of which might have been the slayer. At 
 once he turned his thought to the problem of saving the 
 whelps. 
 
 He walked about to his woodshed and held a candle 
 over them. There were four of them, all whimpering. He 
 examined each in turn. One was a particularly splendid 
 specimen, almost half again as large as any of the others, 
 and a male. Evidently it had partaken of many of the quali- 
 ties of the great hound that was its father. 
 
 All at once he laughed in the darkness. It was not that 
 he had so soon forgotten the death of his pet. It was just 
 then an idea, so bizarre and strange that he could hardly 
 give it credence, had flashed into his mind. He saw a way 
 in which he might save the life of this largest of the whelps. 
 But it was such an ironic thing; and the grim sense of 
 humor that the mountains imbue brought the short syllable 
 of laughter to his lips. 
 
 While sharing the universal hatred of the wolves, Silas 
 Lennox had an intense interest in all the wild life about 
 him. He was really quite an accomplished naturalist; and 
 now the plan that had occurred to him would have done 
 credit to a scientist. As an experiment, it promised all man- 
 ner of interesting developments. For a long moment his 
 daughter's questions went unanswered. 
 
96 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 On his return from a tramp across the ridges late that 
 afternoon, he had flushed a she-wolf from a great clifflike 
 pile of rocks on the mountainside. It was an old resort 
 for wolves, and he had been confident at once that the 
 female had a litter of wolf cubs in one of its caverns. He 
 had vaguely intended to return within a few days and kill 
 the cubs for the bounty. But the prize money would only 
 amount to a few dollars, and the satisfaction that he would 
 get from his experiment would more than make up for 
 them. 
 
 So he took the largest of the cubs and carried it into the 
 house with him. The mountain night is never to be trifled 
 with. The warmth of the slut's body had preserved the 
 lives of the whelps on previous nights, but he wished to run 
 no risks with little Shag. Just why he named him Shag was 
 something of a mystery. It was certain that the hair that 
 covered the little body was not yet long enough to justify 
 the name. All night long the cub whimpered its hunger, 
 wrapped in a great coat behind the kitchen stove. 
 
 "Don't worry, old chap," the mountaineer called to him 
 as he went to his own bed. "To-morrow night you'll have 
 somebody warm to sleep with." 
 
 It was a curious thing, — the little drama that transpired 
 just before dawn. Lennox rose and dropped the pup into 
 the pocket of his coat. Then he climbed up slowly to the pile 
 of rocks that he had passed on the preceding afternoon. 
 
 But he didn't seek at once for the cavern. The reason was 
 extremely simple. Wolves are cowardly as a rule; but 
 Lennox knew enough of animals to know that no trust must 
 be placed in a she-wolf with cubs. Sometimes they dis- 
 play a sudden, desperate courage that isn't pleasant to face. 
 He climbed up to a vantage point about one hundred yards 
 
Shag of the Packs 97 
 
 from the rock pile. It was noticeable that he kept to the 
 windward of the rocks, and that he walked with extreme 
 caution. 
 
 He knew the way of the wolves. He thought he wouldn't 
 have long to wait. A half hour passed, and the dawn bright- 
 ened. Then he saw the she-wolf come stalking forth from 
 her lair. 
 
 Lennox sat perfectly still. A single twitch of a muscle 
 might have given him away. The she-wolf sniffed, looked 
 about intently, then turned down the canon. Still the man 
 sat motionless. As he had anticipated, in a moment the wolf 
 came circling back. Assured this time that no danger 
 threatened her whelps, she trotted boldly down the glen and 
 disappeared in the brush at its end. 
 
 A moment more the mountaineer waited, to make certain 
 that the wolf would not reappear. Then he crept down to 
 the rock pile. It was but the work of a moment to find the 
 cavern. Its entrance was narrow, and he had to lie almost 
 flat to creep in. And it was to be noted that he carried 
 his pistol ready in his hand. Lennox was mountaineer 
 enough to know that occasionally the male wolf will remain 
 on guard over the whelps; and he wished to be prepared for 
 emergencies. A wolf cornered in a cavern is not pleasant 
 to encounter. 
 
 He scratched a match; then chuckled aloud. It was just 
 as he had thought. Five wolf cubs, not yet a week old, lay in 
 a little furry heap in the corner of the cavern. They whined 
 at the hand that stretched to them. 
 
 Lennox spent no more time in the lair than was absolutely 
 necessary. He chose the nearest of the whelps and dropped it 
 into his pocket. From the opposite pocket he took the 
 
98 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 whimpering form of Shag. And he dropped him into the 
 wolf cub's place. 
 
 An instant later he was crawling back into the light, the 
 joy of a scientist shining in his eyes. The life of Shag, grow- 
 ing up among the wolves, would be an absorbing study for 
 years to come. 
 
 II 
 
 The animal intelligence has certain very definite limits. 
 This fact is indisputable. It is doubtful that the she-wolf 
 was ever aware of the alien presence among her litter. 
 It was not that she could not see in the gloomy cavern. The 
 bright circles of blue fire that she wore for eyes were 
 particularly well fitted for seeing in the darkness. It was 
 just that her understanding could not leap far enough to 
 conceive of the substitution. 
 
 It was true that she knew of the human visitor. She 
 had something even better than understanding, — a nose as 
 sharp and sure as the scientific instruments of a detective. 
 At first she was greatly disturbed. She stole about the rock 
 pile, looking for enemies; then examined her cubs to see that 
 no harm • had befallen. Little Shag was lifted tenderly 
 between her strong jaws, shaken for sign of an injury, and 
 deposited with the rest. She was not in the least suspicious 
 of him. If she had any emotion at all regarding him, 
 it was motherly pride, for he was half again as large as 
 the other cubs. When she lay down among them, he had 
 strength enough to push away one of his foster brothers to get 
 at his dinner. 
 
 He thrived on the strong milk. There came a day when 
 his eyes were completely opened, and he had the first look 
 at his foster brothers. They were still blind, and he nosed 
 
Shag of the Packs 99 
 
 them with impunity. And he began to wonder about the 
 piercing light that flung in through the cavern maw. It 
 hurt his eyes at first; but at the same time he had an ir- 
 resistible instinct to crawl toward it. The she-wolf, re- 
 turning from a hunt, met him at the very mouth of the 
 cavern. 
 
 She knocked him back among his brothers; but she was 
 proud of him none the less. That he would already start 
 out on an expedition of his own, on the day that sight had 
 come to his eyes, gave promise of two traits that should 
 carry him far. These two traits are very essential in the 
 forest. One leads to power, even to sovereignty of the pack. 
 It is courage. The other, no less important, brings knowl- 
 edge. Old Woof has such a large bump of it he can scarcely 
 carry it around. It is curiosity. It is interesting to con- 
 jecture where human beings would be to-day if the lesser 
 people from which we sprung had not been simply eaten 
 up with curiosity about everything under the sun. It has 
 been the impulse that led to greatness. 
 
 But the day was soon to come when the mother wolf 
 was to take her brood out on the hillside with her. The 
 spring was drawing to early summer. And possibly, by 
 now, the she-wolf had begun to have vague wonderings 
 about this largest of her children. He didn't hold his ears 
 quite like his brothers. Their ears were always pointed, 
 intent on distant sounds. Shag let his droop back in a 
 cifrious way, and now and again he carried his tail lifted 
 rather than pointed down. He had a reddish tinge and softer 
 fur. But she couldn't question his superiority. He was 
 the strongest of her litter, the best able to take care of him- 
 self in the awkward, half-cocked, snarling tussles that they 
 waged among themselves; and he was always quickest to 
 
ioo The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 learn. And the strangest thing of all was the way he 
 wagged his tail, back and forth, when he was pleased. It 
 was a motion unknown among the others. 
 
 Then the hills began to grow yellow and still in the long, 
 hot days of late summer. The wolf and her brood ranged 
 ever farther. They were learning to hunt. 
 
 In all the range of human experience, there is no more 
 keen excitement than tht first hunt of a wolf. They would 
 start out at the first fall of darkness, and little Shag 
 went wild with rapture at the first breath of the night. 
 There were the smells pungent and wild in the wind, the 
 sounds of the whispering, stirring forest life, the long 
 shadows, the deep thickets, the mystery and the silence. 
 Shag was a dog, but all dogs are first cousins to the wolves. 
 The hunting came natural to him. 
 
 At first the brood kept to the rear of their mother and 
 had no hand in the actual killing. But once she let them 
 gather about a stricken fawn from which the life had not 
 yet fled. She taught them to stalk — that utter silent ad- 
 vance that is the accomplishment of most of the wild crea- 
 tures, high and low — the quick lunge and recoil that in a 
 death fight can tear an artery to shreds and fling the wolf 
 back to safety; and one day she fished for them beside a little 
 river that came tumbling into one of the Upland Lakes. 
 Fishing was an art in itself. It required the most ex- 
 acting patience. A human being, fishing for trout, is usually 
 ready to leave a hole if it does not yield up a strike in 
 a dozen casts. The old she-wolf thought nothing of stand- 
 ing beside a creek for a full hour, as motionless as a form 
 in stone, waiting for the suspicious trout to come to the 
 surface. Then her paw would whip down like the head 
 of a serpent; and that means that no human eye could fol- 
 
Shag of the Packs ; , jqi 
 
 low it. She would strike the fish from the water as a tennis 
 player strikes the ball from the air. 
 
 And of those things that she did not teach, little Shag 
 had a whole fund of instincts to tell him. Instincts taught 
 him how to freeze into simply a motionless dark shadow, 
 almost invisible in the thickets, at the first sign of danger. 
 He knew how to drift like smoke through the underbrush, 
 how to creep up on a covey of grouse, how to put the whole 
 weight of his body behind the blow. 
 
 Usually he hunted with his little foster brothers. Al- 
 ready he was their leader. The thousands of generations 
 that his ancestors had lived with human beings had in- 
 stilled in him a natural sagacity far beyond that of the gen- 
 eral run of wolf cubs. And his training was giving him, in 
 addition, that superlative cunning of the wild creatures. 
 
 One night he wakened with a realization that a change 
 had come in the seasons. The hours of hunting had 
 lengthened, and now it seemed to him that the daylight, to 
 be spent in sleeping in the cavern, sped like a breath. 
 Berries were ripe in the thickets, and old Woof, the bear, 
 shuffled and grunted among them from twilight till dawn. 
 Shag was not interested in berries himself. He was a meat 
 eater ; and he felt some degree of scorn for the piglike crea- 
 ture that munched them with such delight. The leaves 
 of the perennial trees were splotched with reds and yellows, 
 and always they were whisking off in the winds. More than 
 once their rustle had frightened him in the night. But these 
 things were not the greatest change. The thing that moved 
 him most was a new stir, a new impulse in the air. The air 
 was crisp and cold, and it made his blood leap in his veins. 
 And one night the snow fell on the high ridges, lay a little 
 
102 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 while in a mysterious mantel over the leaves, and then 
 melted away. 
 
 And in the last days of fall, little Shag was introduced to 
 the wolf pack. 
 
 He heard them coming a long way. They were singing 
 along the ridges, a wild, strange song that moved him more 
 than any hunting. The sound carried far, rising and fall- 
 ing over the shadowed forest, and its echo was a voice that 
 suddenly spoke out of Shag's savage heart. He found him- 
 self trembling all over. And, yes, his mother was trembling, 
 too, as if in terror. The other whelps stood behind her. 
 
 He had never heard the pack before, for the simple rea- 
 son that the wolves live apart all through the summer months. 
 How he recognized the sound at once is a mystery that most 
 human beings would not care to attempt to explain. Of 
 course, he had heard his mother's voice, raised in triumph 
 over her kill. Yet the sound was nothing like this wild, 
 strange chant that came soaring down from the ridges. 
 
 His mother answered the call — a swift, joyous bark — 
 and began to hasten up the ridge toward the pack. And 
 Shag and her cubs ran behind her. 
 
 They met on a new burn on the very top of the ridge. 
 Even the underbrush had been burned away, and the gaunt 
 forms of the wolves were clear and sharp in the moonlight. 
 It was a strange place. The black snags cast eerie shadows, 
 and the wind made a queer rustle as it swayed them back 
 and forth. The she-wolf barked again, and some of the 
 pack answered her. 
 
 She turned her head, whining to her cubs. They under- 
 stood. She was calling them to follow her. As naturalists 
 know, the wolf cubs are usually introduced to the pack in 
 the fall. Once inducted, they are speedily forgotten. They 
 
Shag of the Packs 103 
 
 follow the old gray leader on the hunt until the spring 
 comes, and then, still too young to breed, they usually hunt 
 with cubs of their own age until another fall. And the old 
 gray leader of the pack — a wolf that weighed over ninety 
 pounds — came sniffing forward to greet her. 
 
 And then there ensued a curious interlude. Usually the 
 introduction of the cubs to the pack is a very short and 
 uninteresting ceremony. A few of the mothers look them 
 over with an appraising eye, a few of the cubs come forward 
 to nudge and romp with them, and the saucy yearlings pre- 
 tend to ignore them completely. And the she-wolf her- 
 self had never dreamed but that her litter would be admitted 
 without question. But she hadn't counted on Shag. 
 
 The entire pack seemed to see him at the same instant. 
 Their bodies whirled in the leaves, a singular sideways jerk 
 of the forequarters as if by the recoil of a powerful spring 
 that brought them facing him in a fighting position, a mo- 
 tion as instinctive as their own breathing. A dozen of 
 them stood crouching, tense and silent among the ruined 
 trees. 
 
 It was only for an instant. It had been a simple reflex 
 at the sight of an ancient enemy. It is a curious thing that 
 no more intense hatred exists in the animal world than be- 
 tween the wolves and the dogs. The pack recognized Shag 
 at once as one of their hated cousins. The older wolves, 
 seeing him among the she-wolf's litter, were willing to wait 
 and question. But this is not the way of young blood. 
 
 Among the pack was a certain young and very arrogant 
 yearling, and he had been hoping all the night for an oppor- 
 tunity to display his prowess. His body simply seemed to 
 streak in the air. A motion faster than a wolf's leap can 
 scarcely be imagined; and the she-wolf did not even have 
 
104 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 time to throw herself on the defensive. She snapped at 
 the dark form as it sped past her, then whirled to her foster 
 son's defense. 
 
 But the most curious thing of all was that her aid was not 
 needed. Shag had reflexes, too, as finely edged as those 
 of the wolves, and without conscious thought he gathered 
 to meet the spring. But he didn't permit it to strike him 
 squarely. That would have meant an instant's disadvantage 
 before he could recover from the force of the impact. He 
 sprang aside, and the yearling's body only brushed his 
 shoulder. And as it went past his white fangs flashed out 
 and buried in the soft flesh of the yearling's throat. 
 
 There was no second leap to that fight. It was a clean 
 kill, a single, unerring bite to the jugular vein. Although 
 Shag was half again as large as any of the other seasonal 
 cubs, the yearling had outweighed him by ten pounds. And 
 the old gray veterans of the pack wondered among them- 
 selves. 
 
 For an instant all individual voices were drowned out in 
 the snarl that went up from the pack. Perhaps it was 
 the smell of blood, perhaps only the excitement that sweeps 
 like a fire through their veins at the sight of a death fight. 
 Shag stood facing the pack, shivering with fear, yet crouched 
 and ready for the next aggressor. The old wolves stood 
 silent in the moonlight. And the she-wolf was crouched in 
 front, ready to fight till she died for her foster cub. 
 
 A gray wolf stalked forward, and she snarled menacingly. 
 But he made it plain he meant no harm to her cubs. He 
 sniffed at her, and she returned the caress. Then he lifted 
 his nose to the moon and howled. 
 
 She howled, too. The pack raised its voice. Shag never 
 heard such a sound as this before. It thrilled and moved him 
 
Shag of the Packs 105 
 
 beyond any experience of his life. It was the very voice 
 of the wilderness, sad and wild and strange beyond all 
 simile. 
 
 Then the pack swung on up the ridge, and Shag ran with 
 the other cubs. But the evening had taught one lesson. 
 His whole life with the wolves was to be continual strife, 
 with death, soon or late, at the end. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Although he did not know it, Lennox's experiment Tiad 
 turned out well. Shag was a dog with a wolf's training, — 
 a wild animal with the instincts of domesticity. He had 
 learned the ways of the wild. Above them, serene and 
 sure as a strong man's courage, he had the penetrating, cal- 
 culating intelligence of a dog. 
 
 No animal ever had a more terrific struggle for ex- 
 istence. He shared all the dangers of the wolf pack and 
 was at perpetual war with the wolves themselves besides. 
 Trap and poison and rifle were always out for him. He 
 had certain handicaps — various senses that generations in 
 domesticity had blunted, and structural differences that les- 
 sened his endurance. He fought for the right to run with 
 the pack — a fresh battle every fall — and he killed until the 
 wolves whined and told him to kill no more. It was true 
 that he could have hunted alone. But such a course never 
 occurred to him. He had grown up with the wolves, and 
 the wolves' ways were the only ways he knew. In the fall 
 he fought for his mate, fight after fight, until he con- 
 quered. 
 
 The result of all these battles was, of course, an ab- 
 normal physical development, and fighting prowess far be- 
 
106 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 yond any of his gaunt fellows of the pack. He was rather 
 larger than most of the wolves. Trained down, without a 
 fraction of an ounce of extra flesh on his gaunt frame, 
 he weighed a full hundred pounds. He had the general build 
 of his shepherd mother; while the larger breed of his father 
 gave him additional strength and size. He had a beautiful 
 bronze coat, his mother's intelligent head and eyes, a splendid 
 brush, and a full-ringing bay that could announce his kill 
 across miles of silent canon. Above all things, he was a 
 fighter. He fought after the wolf fashion — lightning spring 
 and recoil — but he put into his battles a cold intelligence 
 and cunning that would overbalance any kind of a physical 
 handicap. 
 
 He lived the life of the gray, far-ranging hunters of the 
 ridges; and mostly he found it good. He delighted in the 
 changing seasons, the thrill and stir of spring, the long hunt- 
 ing twilights of summer, and the fighting days of fall. The 
 delight when the pack first ran together was always new. 
 He loved the sense of resistless strength, of grim companion- 
 ship, and his wild heart would leap and threaten to burst 
 at the wolves' song that rose and fell as they ran along the 
 ridges. He loved the constant battle, the realization that 
 his own prowess alone had forced himself upon the pack. 
 
 But it was not all joy. There was always fear, the 
 heritage of every beast of the wild, and he got to know it 
 very well. He knew cold, too, — cold that dropped down 
 seemingly from the farthest stars, cold to lock the eye- 
 lids and strike dead the mountain streams. 
 
 The wolf cry was always so eerie and strange over the 
 snow. It seemed to carry so far. And in those winter days 
 he became particularly well known to hunger. These were 
 the starving times, and no living creature that passed the 
 
Shag of the Packs 107 
 
 track of the pack was safe. All forest laws turn to dust in 
 the face of hunger. Nothing matters then. At such times, 
 Shag kept close watch on even the female that ran be- 
 side him. He didn't know when her sharp fangs would 
 leap for his throat. 
 
 Except for one thing, Shag would have been content. 
 Of course, that means something far different from the 
 contentment of human beings. The whole tone and key 
 of the wilderness is sad; and the longer a naturalist lives 
 in it, the more unavoidable becomes this fact. There is 
 fear and cold and hunger, and the constant, tireless, un- 
 ceasing struggle for existence. Of course, there are com- 
 pensations; and, perhaps, one night of such exultation as 
 the wolf pack knows when it swings along on the elk trail 
 makes up for a whole season of cold and hunger. The single 
 exception, in the case of Shag, was a strange, little-under- 
 stood feeling of unfamiliarity and unrest with all this for- 
 est life. 
 
 There was one sensation that was always returning to 
 him. It seemed to him, as he hunted through the thickets, 
 that some dearly beloved companion that he had always 
 known had just been lost to him. The companion was 
 never another wolf; rather it was a tall figure, straight and 
 utterly fearless. There was an actual sense of loss, of 
 loneliness; and often he would spend long hours beating 
 through the brush in search of this lost friend. In his 
 dreams, those hunts with the tall, straight form were par- 
 ticularly frequent. He didn't know who it was. He only 
 knew it was some one very brave and very strong, whose will 
 must never be opposed. 
 
 To his knowledge, he had never even caught sight of 
 human beings. Once or twice he was dimly aware that 
 
108 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 some unknown breed of creature lived down on the level 
 spaces along the rivers, but the few times that he came near 
 enough to be aware of them, the pack would desert him 
 and flee. They always seemed so afraid, even in their full 
 strength. It was a curious thing. He liked to feel, par- 
 ticularly in the autumn time before the winter subdued and 
 humbled him, that the pack need fear no living thing that 
 walked the earth. Even the great elk fled from the as- 
 sembled wolves, so why should they be afraid of these un- 
 known creatures in the valleys? And it seemed to be the 
 worst fear of all. Even that of the forest fire was secondary. 
 He had known the pack to keep its formation when the 
 forest fire roared behind. But always at the first tart smell 
 on the wind, an icy terror seemed to get into all their num- 
 ber. They would scurry in all directions and leave him 
 wondering on the hills alone. 
 
 He began to have a devouring curiosity in regard to them. 
 The smell that reached him was not greatly different from 
 the smell of a forest fire; so he began to think that pos- 
 sibly the valley was inhabited by some particularly terrible 
 kind of forest fires. And this wasn't to be wondered at, 
 for, of course, that particular smell was nothing more than 
 the smoke from chimneys. More than once he determined to 
 climb down in the valleys and see for himself. But he never 
 had quite the courage to do it. Of course, it was a simple 
 matter of fear contagion, imbued from his fellows of the pack. 
 
 But even the smell of the wood smoke found curious 
 echoes in his memory. It seemed to him he had known it 
 always; and at such times it seemed to him that it must 
 not be so terrible, after all. 
 
 At last there came the summer when he saw one of these 
 inhabitants of the valley. And he knew at once that he 
 
Shag of the Packs 109 
 
 had found his lost companion, — the tall form that had evaded 
 him in the thickets. 
 
 It was a midsummer afternoon, and he and his mate were 
 asleep in the buckbush. There is an old saying that a wolf 
 sleeps with one eye open. Of course, it isn't literally true; 
 but it means that no matter how deeply he is asleep, 
 he is always ready to jump. He has a whole range of re- 
 flexes that are a great deal better than automatic burglar 
 alarms. Shag and his mate, at the same fraction of the 
 same instant, wakened with the realization that some liv- 
 ing creature had approached their lair. A deer would have 
 leaped to his feet in panic, perhaps to be overtaken by a 
 hunter's bullet. And maybe that is the reason that the 
 deer are becoming extinct in regions where wolves still 
 flourish. But Shag and his mate were not deer; so, except 
 for the faintest stir when they awakened, they crouched 
 and were still. 
 
 Both of them saw the same instant. Usually the she-wolf 
 waited for her mate to decide the course of action. This time 
 she decided herself. She began to steal away in the op- 
 posite direction, creeping at first, then trotting, and as the 
 wall of brush grew thick behind her, running at top speed. 
 
 It was a curious thing. Of course, he was frightened him- 
 self, at first. There is no disease in all the world so con- 
 tagious as fear; and some of the terror that his mate felt 
 was instilled in him. But at once a more tremendous emotion 
 got the better of it. He was suddenly, deeply curious 
 about this tall figure in the thickets. 
 
 For the first time in his life he was looking at a human 
 being. It was the tall and pretty daughter of Silas Lennox, 
 sixteen now, and quite as straight as the pines she lived 
 
no The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 among. She was climbing the ridge on an errand of her 
 father's. 
 
 He stood trembling, as if in abject terror. And he didn't 
 understand that sudden fever that came into his blood. 
 He felt strangely and deeply humbled, even more than when 
 the winter sun shone on the expanse of snow. 
 
 But the girl did not look at him. She was singing to 
 herself, and her feet tripped lightly over the carpet of pine 
 needles. In an instant the brush crept round her. 
 
 Shag had forgotten his mate. He only knew that he 
 must keep this straight form in sight. He must not lose her 
 again. All his days he had sought her, and already the 
 brush had come between. Forgetting his mate, forgetting 
 his danger and all the training of his wild days, he began 
 to creep after her. He went softly as smoke, shadowing 
 her with all his cunning. He was careful to keep out of 
 sight himself. He followed her by sound and by the 
 occasional glint of her dress through the thickets. 
 
 Never let it be dreamed that he was hunting her. It 
 was not blood lust that propelled him upon this pursuit. 
 It was an emotion he had never known before, that seem- 
 ingly would burn him to dust before he reached the end 
 of the trail. 
 
 The girl did not hear him at all. She sang her way to 
 her destination. It was a cabin across the ridge from her 
 father's cottage, and a woman kissed her at the door. 
 It was the first of these kind of lairs that Shag had ever 
 seen, and he made a slow circuit about it before he came 
 to any conclusion in regard to it. Then he decided that 
 his earlier opinions, that it was in some manner connected 
 with forest fires, must have been right. There was smoke 
 pouring from the chimney. But his emotion was only awe, 
 
Shag of the Packs in 
 
 not fear. And he settled down in the thickets to wait for the 
 girl to reappear. 
 
 He waited the whole night. She did not come. His mate 
 whimpered in the brush behind; but at first he did not 
 heed her. A voice was calling to him down the years, clear 
 and distinct through ten thousand generations of dogs, that 
 could not be denied. It was an obligation, more compelling 
 than the call of the wilderness behind him. His mate 
 came close to him, and tried to tug at his shoulders. But 
 not until the dawn broke did he waken from his wonder- 
 ing, longing dreams enough to turn to her. 
 
 "Come with me, Shag," she seemed to be saying. "They 
 are not our people. Come with me — the hour of hunting 
 is here." 
 
 "They are not your people, true," Shag might have an- 
 swered her, as her eyes lowered before his. "But they 
 are mine. I have found them at last." 
 
 The dawn broke over the hills. It was the hunting hour. 
 And already the glimpse of the girl in the thickets had 
 begun to partake of the quality of a dream, — such a dream as 
 he had had so many times before of trailing some straight 
 figure through the forests. Perhaps it was not real after 
 all — and the deer were feeding on the ridges. So he turned 
 and followed his mate. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the ensuing fall, Shag never forgot the glimpse of the 
 figure in the thickets. Even in mating time he remembered 
 her; and what is recalled in this wild season must, indeed, 
 be deeply inscribed on the memory. Often he would find 
 himself oppressed with strange longings and desires for 
 which there was no relief, and often he made long, rest- 
 
112 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 less journeys through the thickets, the purpose of which 
 he hardly understood himself. He always seemed to be look- 
 ing for some one, — some one whose dress would flash through 
 the buckbush, and whose feet would trip over the pine 
 needles. During such hunts, he would often let the deer cross 
 his trail without even glancing at them. 
 
 It was a busy fall for the forest folk. An instinct had 
 whispered to them, and preparations for the coming winter 
 seemed more than usually extensive. The gnawing people 
 were particularly busy. They enlarged their burrows and 
 worked ceaselessly to pack them full of food. The in- 
 dustry of the bees was a thing to wonder at. Usually they 
 keep close to their trees on cloudy days and stop work 
 as if by a union order rather early in the afternoon. But 
 now they worked as if in the frenzy of starvation, even 
 into the twilight and the cloudy days of late fall. It all 
 portended something. And at first Shag, who was so high 
 on the scale of animals that he had lost many of the in- 
 stincts that are the guide to the lower peoples, did not know 
 what. 
 
 Then he noticed that the berry crop was unusually large. 
 Old Woof was delighted; Shag could hear his contented 
 grunts every time he passed the huckleberry thickets. It 
 was another sign pointing to the same conclusion. The flight 
 of the waterfowl was exceptionally early; they had come 
 and gone by the end of October. In the first of November 
 the snows came to stay. 
 
 The forest creatures did not worry. They are not made of 
 the stuff that worries. They had made what provision 
 they could, and if this didn't avail they could simply die. 
 There were none from whom they might ask help. The 
 snow fell unceasingly, week after week. The deer moved 
 
Shag of the Packs 113 
 
 down to the lower levels. Many of the other wild creatures, 
 such as lynx and cougars, followed them; and no doe dared 
 whisper to her fawn the reason why. The gnawing people 
 and the bears — who really are just sort of overgrown rodents 
 when one pauses to reflect — blinked lazily and yawned and 
 went into their winter quarters. That meant they found a 
 snug place under the snow and went to sleep. But Shag and 
 the pack had no winter quarters to go to. They trusted to 
 their furry hides to protect them against the cold ; and some- 
 times they trusted in vain. And for certain reasons the 
 pack did not dare go down to the foothills. The settlers 
 that lived along the rivers were in no mood to stand any 
 nonsense from wolves. Too many times they had heard their 
 sheep bleat in the night. They waged a relentless war 
 aganist them, and the wolves had learned to stay out of 
 their way. The time was to come when hunger would re- 
 move this fear of the valleys; but it wouldn't remove their 
 deep-seated instinct to remain on the high plateaus. 
 
 Southern Oregon is really a very temperate climate. The 
 warm winds from the sea keep the valley green as a garden 
 throughout the winter. But they die away on the snowflelds 
 before ever they reach the high plateaus. Then the snow 
 deepens, week on week, until the tree boughs bend with it 
 and every road and trail is covered. 
 
 The snow ceased in December, and clear, penetrating cold 
 came instead. It froze the ice on the lakes. It drove away 
 the last of the hardier creatures of the plateaus. The pheas- 
 ants and the grouse headed down into the oak-scrub hill- 
 sides. And then a certain familiar spirit began to walk 
 about the snows. The familiarity that he had with people 
 has become more distant in late years, but yet the race has 
 very good memory of him. And the wolf pack knew him 
 
H4 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 particularly well. The spirit's name was Famine. Evi- 
 dently he had come with the waterfowl out of the North. 
 And he was many months before his time. 
 
 By the Christmas season, the pack's hunting was no 
 longer worth the effort. There was simply nothing for 
 them to kill. Once in a long while they found where a 
 grouse was buried in the snow, but a grouse was only a 
 bite for the fortunate wolf that seized it first. And one 
 night the pack fought over the dead body of a porcupine, 
 found frozen rigid in the snow. And there is an old say- 
 ing in the forest that when a pack will fight for the body of 
 a porcupine, the buzzard will feed in the dawn! 
 
 The wolves have endless endurance. It is one of the 
 marvels of the animal world. They lost flesh, their ribs 
 protruded, but still they kept their strength. They still 
 covered the same astounding distances in their hunting. But 
 there was a change in them. A very important part of 
 them was lost with the last of their extra flesh. This part 
 was their timidity, their cowardice, — a trait that has always 
 been the salvation of the wolf pack. Sad and strange was 
 the song that they sang to the winter stars. And the fear 
 of all things, except death in the shadow of famine, was 
 entirely and suddenly gone from them. 
 
 January drew to its bitter close. The mountain world 
 was lovely in its snow, a sort of terrible loveliness even in 
 its awesomeness and savagery. The wolves crept silently 
 in single file along the ridge tops. They were gaunt and 
 terrible, and their eyes were swimming in curious blue fire. 
 Shag, the hunger madness upon him, led the pack. 
 
 The sun came up on a February morning. It cast a 
 luster on the world of snow. A girl's bright eyes saw it 
 through the window, and it called a promise of a delightful 
 
Shag of the Packs 115 
 
 morning for skis. Wrapped in her mackinaw and leggings, 
 she was not afraid of the cold. She did not even dream 
 that such a spirit as Famine was abroad in the snow, par- 
 ticularly this early in the winter. True, her father, Silas 
 Lennox, had complained of the absence of deer, but he had 
 brought up meat from the valleys below. 
 
 She dressed quickly, and her father called gayly to her 
 as he built the morning fires. He loved the look of her, — 
 this gaunt, silent man. Tall and straight as a reed, yet she 
 had begun to have the first curves and grace of a woman. 
 Sixteen, and soon she must be sent to the advanced schools 
 in the valley below. She answered his call, and put on her 
 skis. 
 
 "Where this morning, Snowbird?" he demanded. "Not 
 across the ridge to-day?" 
 
 "I must see Nell — 'portant business!" she assured him 
 solemnly. Nell was a girl friend that lived across the ridge. 
 
 "And you're quite certain it isn't Nell's good-looking 
 brother!" The color deepened in her cheeks. This was a 
 young mystery in itself. One wouldn't have thought it 
 possible, touched by the sunrise as she was, and yet it was 
 the truth. 
 
 She fled, light as a creature with wings, out across the 
 snowdrifts in front of the house. Then she gave him a 
 laughing answer. "I don't know it's entirely safe," he 
 commented, as he turned to his wife. "But what can you 
 do, with a snow spirit like she is. She won't even take a 
 gun " 
 
 "But who would harm her, in these mountains!" the 
 woman replied. She understood perfectly the instinct that 
 so many times had led her daughter across the mountains 
 
n6 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 to the distant cabin. "The wild animals are all cowards, 
 and she's the fastest human being on earth*on skis." 
 
 "All the same, I wish she had a dog. I wish old Shep 
 was alive; or that little pup I left among the wolves!" His 
 thought turned back to the spring day, almost six years 
 before. He wondered if Shag had survived. Once he 
 thought he had caught a glimpse of him in a distant thicket, 
 but he had never been sure. It seemed to him that the 
 experiment had not been justified, after all, so far as he 
 himself was concerned. There had been little opportunity 
 to study the wolf dog, after the first spring. He turned 
 to his morning tasks. 
 
 The girl continued up the ridge. She gave no thought 
 to anything but the tingling beauty of the morning. It 
 was not a particularly wise thing to do. One of the moun- 
 tain laws is to keep watch, every minute of every hour, and 
 watch the trail. The girl thought she knew the lay of the 
 land well enough to find her way straight across the ridges. 
 In reality, she went a long distance out of her way. 
 
 Of course, she could not see the trail, covered as it was 
 by snow. She relied on her infallible sense of direction. And 
 even when she found she had gone three full miles from the 
 path, she was not in the least alarmed. She knew the way, 
 her young limbs were tireless, the morning was clear and 
 bright and lovely, and she headed straight on toward her 
 destination. She walked one more mile, and that meant 
 she was practically halfway between the two homes. 
 
 She came out on a bare hillside, literally miles in ex- 
 tent. A forest fire had swept over it, like a black plague; 
 leaving only at rare intervals an occasional tottering char- 
 coal stump, a few feet in height. Of course, the buckbush 
 had grown up in the half dozen years since the fire, but the 
 
Shag of the Packs 117 
 
 snow, eight feet deep on the level, had completely covered 
 it. It was a place that Shag might have remembered clearly 
 as the scene of his first fight. 
 
 She continued on, for the moment relieved to come out 
 of the great, silent timber. The wide plain, unbroken ex- 
 cept for the drear burned palings in the snow, stretched for 
 a sheer ten miles. She was at the top of the ridge by now ; 
 and the rest of the way was an easy, downward slope. It 
 was not quite steep enough for coasting; but with a little 
 effort of her own she increased her pace to that of a swift 
 run. It was skiing at its best. 
 
 The grade grew less steep, and she slackened her pace. 
 For an instant she stood still on the mountainside, for the 
 first time aware of the peculiar depth of the silence through 
 which she moved. The mountains are never anything but 
 hushed except in the moments of forest fire or storm; but 
 to-day they seemed to be simply buried in the most utter, 
 breathless silence. It was a dead world, this mountain land. 
 The snow lay deep and deep, as far as her tiring eyes could 
 see. And this particular burn had a desolate quality that 
 suddenly appalled her. Famine could walk here. It was 
 just the kind of place that the dread spirit would choose 
 for its abode. 
 
 She stood still, straining at the silence. She could hear 
 the stir of her own pulse. And then she hastened on. It 
 was still miles to the cabin ; but yet surely those miles would 
 pass quickly. Nell's tall brother would walk home with 
 her, once she reached her destination, and the two of them 
 could laugh and stop to kiss in the very middle of this waste ! 
 She tried to hasten her step. 
 
 And at that instant, loud and terrible and far-ringing 
 through the silences, the wolf pack bayed upon her trail. 
 
n8 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 The high ridge where Snowbird stood would have made 
 a picture that would be exceptionally hard to forget. The 
 desolate snags, the miles of sunlit snow, the girl frozen in 
 her tracks, all seemed to partake, in some vague way, of 
 the quality of a dream. She seemed so slight, so girlish, 
 seemingly so fragile in the face of this sudden expression 
 of wilderness might. 
 
 Yet in reality she was very brave. It is not easy to keep 
 self-control when the wolf pack bays. It is one of the most 
 terrible sounds in the animal world, and in the lower crea- 
 tures it usually induces a panic that leads straight to death. 
 Of all the deadly things in the mountains, to lose self-con- 
 trol is the worst. It means the loss of sense of direction, 
 of cunning and intelligence, and thus all hope of escape. Just 
 for an instant she stood still, until the wild cry died away. 
 And then the hardihood of spirit that life in the mountains 
 induces came to her aid. 
 
 Her gaze leaped behind, then made a slow circle about her. 
 And she was face to face with the truth. There were no 
 trees that she could climb to safety. The nearest was far 
 beyond the desolate stretch of burn, seemingly miles dis- 
 tant. The few burned, tottering poles that the fire had left 
 could not be climbed, and if they could they would not bear 
 her weight. One thing remained. It was flight. 
 
 And even flight was such a tragically long chance. She 
 did not permit herself to hope that she could reach the big 
 timber before the pack caught up with her. She could glide 
 swiftly on her skis, but they could come more swiftly still. 
 Her one hope was that she could intimidate them, hold 
 them off, until she could reach safety. Life had got down 
 
Shag of the Packs 119 
 
 simply to a matter of whether or not the wolves were des- 
 perate enough to attack at once. 
 
 The silence pressed about her, and she leaned forward 
 to take the first stride. And for the first time it occurred 
 to her that possibly all her fears had been in vain, that 
 the wolf pack had simply crossed her trail on hunting of their 
 own. Once more she glanced back to the top of the ridge. 
 
 But it was only an instant's hope. For in the swift glance 
 that she had of the shoulder of the ridge, the truth came 
 home very straight indeed. The pack had surmounted the 
 crest. She saw the strange, gaunt forms, seeming abnor- 
 mally large through the clear, thin atmosphere, in sudden, 
 startling profile against the snow. 
 
 She did not cry out. If she made any sound at all, it 
 was just a gasp, a soblike catching of the breath, that the 
 utter, boundless silence swallowed and obscured. She knew 
 what mercy she might expect from the wolf pack, if they 
 attacked in the snow. The color was struck from her face. 
 There was no interlude of time. It vanished with the speed 
 of light. And then she started running down the long slope, 
 faster than she had ever skied in her life before. 
 
 The pack was running by scent. Its gray members swung 
 along in single file, heads low to the ground. A great, gaunt 
 wolf ran in front, not because he was a physical superior 
 to Shag, but because his nose was keener. Shag came next, 
 his burnished coat lustrous in the sunlight. And the gaunt 
 fellows followed, wholly silent and intent. 
 
 There was a quality of strangeness about this chase. The 
 wolves were not usually so silent. The reason was simply 
 that all of them were hovering on the very frontier of mad- 
 ness. They had gone hungry too long. It showed in the 
 blue fire that always played in their eyes, in the way they 
 
120 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 sometimes whispered and growled deep in their throats, in 
 the foam that often gathered about their terrible fangs. 
 With Shag, it had taken the form of dreams. Night after 
 night he had dreamed of the tall form „ he had lost and 
 found and lost again, and it had become increasingly diffi- 
 cult to distinguish the dreams from the realities. He had 
 heard, again and again, voices calling to him from the dark- 
 ness and the thickets, — voices that were full and strong and 
 commanding. And his hunger was a searing fire within him. 
 
 At that instant the gray wolf in front bayed again, a 
 short, hoarse cry that all of them understood. He had caught 
 sight of their prey. True, it was too distant for their 
 short-sighted eyes to distinguish, but any living creature 
 was game in these starving times. His cry was a signal 
 for them to leave the trail and run from henceforth by sight. 
 The gray body seemed to stretch out and he fell into the 
 long, running stride that is the age-old terror of the snow. 
 
 At once the whole pack leaped from the file and ran be- 
 side him. They made a compact little body, possibly a 
 dozen wolves, and their wild voices rose in the hunting 
 chorus. It was not the same sound as the chanting bay 
 that Snowbird had heard before. It was a wild frenzied 
 bark, without rhythm or cadence, from every wolfish throat. 
 They were in sight of their game, and the blood lust was 
 upon them. 
 
 Then the girl cried for help. The sound was dim and 
 shrill in the silence of the wild. And there were none to 
 hear or to heed. The forest in which she might find safety 
 was still endless miles away. She sped on, and it is true that 
 terrible sobs were clutching at her throat. Now she could 
 hear the beat of paws on the snow behind. 
 
 The wolves were so close now that they could hear the 
 
Shag of the Packs 121 
 
 shrill cry. But mostly it only served to heighten the fever 
 and madness in their blood. They knew their prey now, — 
 a human being, such as they had always feared. But there 
 was no room for fear in their savage hearts. Besides, she 
 was weak and afraid. They could hear her shrill cry, like 
 the bleat of a deer as it falls. 
 
 She had turned now at bay. They could see her plainly. 
 Again and again they heard her call, an unanswered cry 
 that died quickly in tjae silence. And they did not slacken 
 their pace at all. 
 
 But there was one of the pack whose response to the 
 girl's shrill cry had been entirely different. Except for the 
 madness that was upon them, the blur and the haze that 
 was over their fire-filled eyes, the wolves might have seen 
 a peculiar, significant change in the attitude of one of their 
 number. That one was Shag. 
 
 The voice over the snow found a curious echo in his 
 memory. It was not that in his own life he had ever heard 
 such a call before. Rather it was a call that had sung 
 down to him out of the years, out of the thousands of gen- 
 erations in which his ancestors had been the servants of men. 
 He knew that voice, vibrant and full, — the voice that his 
 breed had always listened for and heeded. And now it 
 had a strange quality of distress and terror that moved him 
 to the depths of his nature. It simply seemed to tear his 
 heart to pieces. He didn't consciously know it was a call 
 for help. If he realized the fact at all, it was simply an 
 instinct. It wakened strange memories and desires that 
 were buried deep in the labyrinth of the germ plasm, an in- 
 stinct that seemed wholly at cross-purposes to all his wilder- 
 ness training. In the forest, creatures fight their own fights, 
 or else they die. Yet the call awakened an impulse that 
 
122 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 was even greater than the first law of the forest, that of 
 self-preservation, for he knew that not even his own death 
 must stand between him and the answering of that call. It 
 was an obligation that could not be denied. 
 
 And now he was near enough that he could recognize the 
 prey. He knew that tall form, the compelling eyes, the 
 throat white against the dark hair. It was the same form 
 that he had trailed through the thickets that never-to-be- 
 forgotten day in the fall, and for which he had waited, out- 
 side a cabin, the whole night. It was his old dream come true 
 again. It was the old friend, lost to him so long, found again. 
 And even now the fellows of his pack were springing upon 
 it, to tear away its life. 
 
 At that instant Shag seemed to go mad. He had seem- 
 ingly been running his fastest before. Now he simply 
 darted, faster than the eye could believe. He did not 
 leap for the girl. He knew, even better than he knew the 
 fact of his own life, that he must die before the fangs of 
 the pack must be allowed to tear the girl. All things else 
 had ceased to matter. One of the great gray wolves was 
 even now leaping for her throat, and Shag had sprung to 
 intercept him in the air. 
 
 He never sprang truer. The girl had thrown up her 
 hands to protect her throat, so she did not see the two bodies 
 meet in mid-air. White teeth flashed, tore for an instant 
 at a gray throat, and the wolf and the dog fell together. 
 The wolf did not get up. His jugular vein had been torn 
 like so much paper. But Shag sprang without an instant's 
 pause at the second of the wolves. 
 
 The creature died quickly. There was not even a mo- 
 ment's battle. Mad with his blood lust, the gray wolf 
 did not even see him spring. Again Shag whirled, facing 
 
Shag of the Packs 123 
 
 the oncoming pack. And they set their feet and slid in the 
 snow. 
 
 For the first time, the girl looked up. An instant before, 
 her clean, young soul had been ready for death. There 
 had been no hope. Now two of the largest of the pack 
 lay dead, squarely at her feet. They had died as if from 
 a blast from heaven, in utter silence, without a convulsive 
 movement. And now the pack was face to face with a 
 great, shaggy, lustrous-coated dog, a savior and a protector 
 in her final moment of need. 
 
 She didn't try to understand. She saw the largest of the 
 remaining wolves spring to one side, as if to avoid the dog's 
 fangs, and turn again toward her. But Shag whirled with 
 unbelievable speed and intercepted him. Twice the white 
 fangs flashed, then the dog sprang over the body of a yearling 
 to intercept a young male that was rushing the girl from 
 the rear. The cub reached the girl's body, to be whirled 
 away by her own splendid strength, but the young male 
 died in the air. 
 
 The remainder of the pack surged forward, but the dog 
 leaped among them. This was no ordinary fighting. He 
 sprang to the right and left, backward and forward, snap- 
 ping, recoiling, striking with shoulder and fang and claws. 
 The bewildered wolves struck at him in vain. They tore 
 his burnished coat; but he killed in return. He seemed 
 imbued with the speed of light itself. In the first place, 
 his years of fighting had trained him for just such a battle 
 as this; and, in the second, he was prompted by an impulse 
 more potent and compelling than any he had ever known 
 before. 
 
 They closed around him, and he sprang clear and darted 
 
124 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 after the girl. His instinct was to protect her, not simply 
 to kill his fellows. 
 
 And with this fight the battle of the burn came to a 
 sudden end. The remainder of the wolves gave no more of 
 their thought to Shag. Many of their number lay dead 
 in the snow, and it is one of the most hated of the traits 
 of the wolves that they will devour their own mates without 
 compunction. They turned with hideous ferocity upon the 
 bodies of the fallen. 
 
 And as for Shag? He was bleeding and torn; but an 
 exultation was upon him such as in all his battles he had 
 never known before. He had found his lost friend, he had 
 fought for her to the death, and he had conquered. All 
 the long trail of his life had pointed to just this moment. 
 
 He knew she must never be allowed out of his sight again. 
 He felt the touch of her hand upon his head, and it was a 
 glory and magic that stirred and enraptured him to the 
 roots of his being. Not for nothing had a thousand of his 
 ancestors given their lives and services to men. All his 
 life they had spoken to him through his instincts, and now 
 he had heeded them. Shag had come into his heritage at last. 
 
THE SON OF THE WILD THINGS 
 
 "Often among the nations a child is born seemingly with the 
 blessings of the wild upon him." — From a Frontiersman's Diary. 
 
 Beyond the cities and the farm-lands and the forests, 
 beyond the last trap lines and the farthest trading posts, 
 in a region where white men do not go and the North Star 
 almost seems no longer in the north, a long bright inlet 
 stretches from the uttermost waters of Baffin Bay. It 
 stretches an arm into a strange gray land that in the minds 
 of white men is simply "the Unknown." 
 
 It is not charted on the mariner's maps. You won't find 
 it named in any geography. It is too cold for the forests 
 to grow, and the rocky valleys and the towering crags 
 are drear and bare beyond the power of words to describe. 
 The green ice locks down on the waters for most of the year. 
 The snow comes, foot after foot, till the meager shrubbery 
 and the reindeer moss and lichens are out of sight. There 
 is never any sound, in winter, except now and then the soft 
 step of the wild creatures on the snow. In the spring the 
 ice breaks and churns and crashes and storms with a noise 
 more terrible than a hundred thunderclaps at once; but 
 spring does not mean warm weather and flowers. Every 
 day in the spring the sun rises somewhat higher in the 
 south, and the snows begin to run away in clear rivulets, 
 and small avalanches rumble on the crags, and here and there 
 the mosses begin to show above the snow. But not until 
 summer do the flowers come, and then they only stay a 
 
126 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 little while. They are hardy, starlike blossoms that sprinkle 
 the floors of the valleys with color; and they blossom very 
 bravely and gayly until the frost comes again. The grass 
 starts up too — for Nature is a persevering, tireless spirit. 
 Except for the weary waste of crags, the region in sum- 
 mer is almost beautiful. But summer is just a breath that 
 is soon gone. The soft rain turns to sifting snow in early 
 September, and the winter closes down on land and sea. 
 
 And with the winter comes the night that never seems to 
 end. It is not the kind of night that most people know, 
 black so that you cannot see your hand before your face. 
 Mostly it is a sort of deep twilight, wherein a snow-covered 
 shrub can look exactly like a ghost, and a wandering caribou 
 is a monster. Nothing seems to appear in the correct per- 
 spective, — always too large or too small, or too near or 
 too far. Sounds seem too loud, or else just a whisper much 
 too soft. It is easy to imagine all kinds of things, those 
 winter nights. It is a gray land of ghosts and strangeness; 
 and any dream — except that of warmth and comfort and 
 mercy — can come true. 
 
 The Northern Lights play above, and they are never the 
 same. You can read all kinds of things in them and see all 
 manner of things in their light. Sometimes they are just 
 a ruddy glare in the sky, and sometimes they waver and 
 shimmer like a silk flag in the wind, and often they send 
 queer streams and splashes of fire out across the bowl of 
 the sky. They are red and purple and yellow; and some- 
 times they throw a green glamor over all the land. This 
 is the worst time : when the green light is on the snow, the 
 Innuits know that starvation and death and maybe worse 
 things are coming in the morning. 
 
 It is very easy to die, in this place. It is the easiest 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 127 
 
 thing of all to do. To live at all means constant battle — 
 not six or eight hours out of twenty-four — but almost every 
 moment not spent in sleep. The cold knows no mercy. To 
 be caught in it, unprotected, means death, very quickly 
 and comparatively gently. There is a moment when the 
 blood feels oddly warm, and then the Innuit spirit goes 
 slipping away over the snow to the dwellings of the Arsissut. 
 When one goes there, he is never cold or hungry any more. 
 But if he has been a bad Innuit, he goes to another place, — 
 to a region above the sky where it is always cold and one 
 is always hungry. Then there is starvation, a thing never 
 to be forgotten. But the Innuits do not worry about it 
 till it comes. And finally there are the great, gaunt Arctic 
 wolves that become very desperate in the long winter nights. 
 
 Even the Innuits know it is a strange land, and it is 
 their home. They say that good and wicked gods are al- 
 ways battling in the mists just beyond their sight, and 
 if the wicked gods win, the people will die. Then there 
 are the torno that take the form of bears and seals — they 
 ordinarily live in the rocks and trees — and often, in the 
 twilight when the winter air is electric and Aurora Borealis 
 dances in the sky, they seem to move. Then there is Kusiifi- 
 nek, that can cause sudden sickness or death. 
 
 But the white people to the south should not call this 
 place "the Unknown." There are a number of creatures 
 that know this land very well. 
 
 The wild geese, for instance, that come in such queer 
 wedges from out of the South, have a very good knowledge 
 of the district. They know which ponds are half-choked 
 with tender wild rice, and which have only pebbly bottoms 
 not worth exploring. They know the thickets where it 
 is safe to nest, the places secure from the stealthy onslaught 
 
128 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 of wolves. You can hear them drearily honking a kind of 
 mournful ode to the bleak land beneath them. They come 
 when the snows melt, and no one can count their numbers. 
 
 Even the puffins have a fair idea of the place. They sit 
 all day on the rocks, and they always seem very wise with 
 their heads erect and in their judicial attitudes. In reality 
 they are very foolish. Even the women — the placid 
 kenmeiaf that chew die skins all day in the huts — can till 
 their sealskin sacks with puffin whenever they choose. 
 
 Of course, what the wolves know of the place would fill 
 many volumes the size of this book. Since they cannot talk 
 to people, no one will ever know how vast and complex 
 this knowledge is, but the Innuit respect is enough to 
 follow the wolf pack when his tribe is starving; the wolves 
 nearly always take him to game. Darkness means nothing 
 to the wolves. They. can kill a seal beside one of ten 
 thousand inlets that look exactly the same, sing through 
 the valleys for forty miles that night, and return to it straight 
 as a light-shaft the next day. 
 
 The polar bear knows the region too; and he has an 
 advantage over the wolves in that he is a marvelous swim- 
 mer. He can swim out and explore the many crags and 
 islands that outcrop in the straits; and it is true that human 
 explorers often find him riding like a castaway on a great 
 fragment of iceberg far from shore. Then there are the 
 caribou, wandering for endless miles over uncharted roads 
 and never going astray; the long-haired musk-ox, seemingly 
 very awkward and slow, but nimble and fleet as a mountain 
 goat when he wishes to be; the seal that come up out of 
 the sea and breed and fight on the beaches; and the be- 
 whiskered, cross old walrus that can't ever quite make up 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 129 
 
 his mind whether he is a land animal gone to sea, or a 
 marine creature that now and then likes the feel of solid 
 earth beneath his flippers. These things are no strangers 
 in the land. They know more about it than all the ex- 
 plorers of the next hundred years can possibly find out. 
 The youngest caribou in the herd knows things that Admiral 
 Peary died without learning ; and that is saying a great deaL 
 And lastly, the little, happy Innuits know it too. 
 
 They are little only in comparison with the Anglo-Saxon. 
 Many of them are good size, often reaching five feet ten 
 in height, and occasionally one grows to a full six feet. 
 They are just as large as the Indians that make war upon 
 them from the south, and considerably more attractive as 
 neighbors. What they lose in height, they make up in 
 girth — for the Innuit appetite is a tradition. Innuit means 
 simply "the people" in Eskimo talk, and surely they are the 
 only people that the great, bleak region knows. And in 
 spite of the bitter lessons that gave them their knowledge 
 — the lessons of cold and hunger and dire necessity — they are 
 always happy. Of all that strange land, this is the strangest 
 thing of all. They eat and laugh and hunt and sleep and tell 
 a ghost story or two and laugh some more; and this is all 
 they care about doing. They haven't been close enough to 
 the white men to learn how to lie; and they thoroughly 
 believe their own ghost stories. One can believe almost 
 anything in that twilight land, where the boulders take to 
 rolling down the hills of their own accord. Besides, a 
 ghost would be no stranger than a thousand other things 
 in the strange place. Since they have never learned to steal, 
 either, they never have had consciences to make them un- 
 happy. 
 
130 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 But it takes time to acquire knowledge; and the female 
 musk-ox that came browsing along a snow river with her 
 calf was too young to know many of the wiles of these same 
 Innuits. He was her first calf, and she was filled with de- 
 light at the sight of him. True, he was a sleek, handsome 
 little creature to be the son of such a homely mother. The 
 musk-oxen are not given to beauty at any time. They are 
 not much bigger than a fair-sized pony, about eight feet 
 long and nearly four feet high. They have stort, sturdy 
 legs and a little sawed-ofr sheeplike tail. Indeed, some nat- 
 uralists are inclined to think that the musk-oxen have far- 
 off blood ties with the sheep ; and they arrive at this conclu- 
 sion not only from the tail, but from a certain uninteresting 
 conformation of the skull. They can climb as well as any 
 mountain sheep, an attribute not generally possessed by the 
 oxen, and they are agile and speedy to a degree that is simply 
 astonishing. But they certainly are homely and ungraceful 
 and broad-faced. Their hair drapes about them like fine 
 shawls of Cashmere, often three feet long. But the calf was 
 just as graceful and pretty as a Jersey; he had big, gentle 
 eyes and a sturdy, agile little body. 
 
 They were browsing along a rivulet that had sprung from 
 a melting snow bank farther up the slope; and in the 
 magic of the May sunlight they had forgotten that there 
 could be such a thing as danger. The cow cropped the new 
 grass, and now and then browsed at the moss that grew 
 in the shelter of the rocks. The calf romped about her, 
 now and then nosing at her udder and trying to squeeze 
 beneath her belly. 
 
 Then the thing occurred. What had seemed a firm, 
 rich bed of moss and lichens suddenly gave way under her 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 131 
 
 feet, and she went down with a bellow of terror. She had 
 stepped squarely into a reindeer pit. 
 
 These pits, perhaps the most primitive manner of secur- 
 ing meat in existence, are dug by the Innuits and covered 
 with a fragile netting of twigs and moss. They differ from 
 the pits used in taking bear and wolf only so far that they 
 have no impaling stake at the bottom, for sometimes it 
 is well to take a reindeer alive. In an instant the ox was 
 lying, shaken but unhurt, in the floor of the pit, and an 
 escape from its depths was simply out of the question. 
 
 II 
 
 Death was a common thing in the little Innuit settle- 
 ment beside the inlet; and the women took the word of 
 what was happening in Tweegock's hut of skins without 
 astonishment or comment. Dark days were on the settle- 
 ment, it seemed. 
 
 A few nights before, the North Lights had been green, 
 and they might have 'known some evil would befall. The 
 Eskimo people, while intensely superstitious and believing 
 in a whole race of deities or torno, are in a measure fatalists, 
 and nothing seems to matter one way or another. 
 
 It had been an unhappy spring. They were just a frag- 
 ment of a tribe, and they had become separated from the 
 remainder in the preceding autumn. They had been going 
 south in their great oomiacs, or skin boats, and by the cir- 
 cumstances of a sudden gale and freeze, one of the boats 
 had been compelled to make a landing apart from the rest. 
 In it were perhaps ten adults. Only by utmost cooperation 
 can life be sustained in that frozen country, and ten were too 
 few to achieve the best results. And now one of the ten 
 was dying. TmiJs * 
 
 
132 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 It was Tweegock's wife. She lay on a pile of skins in 
 his hut, and a little brown newborn baby was in her arms. 
 
 "I am going to the land of the Arsissut — very quickly," 
 she told her husband. "But I leave you a child — a man 
 child, such as was never born in this place before." 
 
 She showed him the brown-skinned baby. It was a virile, 
 active little creature; and Tweegock could see that it was 
 physically perfect. Never did a newborn have such sturdy 
 legs and arms, such a strong little back. Eskimo women 
 do not often die in childbirth; perhaps the unusual size 
 of the baby was the explanation in this case. The man 
 looked at it with pride. 
 
 "But you will take him too," Tweegock replied in sorrow. 
 "There is no milk. None of the women have young babies. 
 He will die in a day." 
 
 Suddenly her black eyes seemed to be full of light, and 
 she half raised herself on her elbow. 
 
 "He will live," she told him. "The blessings of a tornac 
 is upon his head. I know. I have seen." 
 
 By that she meant that there was a guardian spirit that 
 would take care of her little son. When one of the Innuits 
 has a guardian tornac — a sort of private deity in which the 
 Eskimos believe absolutely — no ice can crush him, no cold 
 freeze him; and the wolves flee when he looks them in the 
 face. The man bent down lower, and his little eyes seemed 
 very, very wide. He believed her wholly. Surely, at the 
 border of the realm of Arsissut, she could tell him only the 
 truth. 
 
 "The tornac came in the shape of a bear," she told him. 
 "A white bear — for he sniffed at the tent just as the babe 
 was born." 
 
 This fact did not surprise Tweegock in the least. As all 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 133 
 
 Innuits believe, a tornac can take the shape of any animal, 
 or a stone or tree, for that matter, at will. 
 
 "The bear came up from the coast and sniffed at the tent," 
 the woman went on. "It means that the wild things are 
 his friends. They will not kill him when they meet him on 
 the snow. They will find his milk for him too. He is born 
 to be the brother of the bear — and the wolf — and the musk- 
 ox. And we will name him Nenook — the bear. 
 
 "I know it, Tweegock! The bear sniffed, and I — I 
 heard it speak," her voice ebbed away; and she had but a 
 moment more of life. The man bent so that his ear was 
 close to the woman's lips. Of course, she had heard the 
 bear speak — for did not often the torno speak through the 
 lips of beasts? And the woman, in the delirium that is 
 the frontier of death, believed she was telling him the truth. 
 
 " 'This,' the bear said, 'is the son of the wild things,' " 
 the woman whispered. "Those were the words: 'This is 
 the son of the wild things. He is a child of the ice floe — 
 and the mountains — and Mucktuf (the caribou) 'on the 
 plains, and the musk-ox in the valleys. He will know 
 their secrets, and the wild will suckle him.' These were 
 the white bear's words, my husband. — And I die!" 
 
 She did die. Even as Tweegock knelt beside her, her life 
 sped away. And he soberly went to tell the other mem- 
 bers of the little settlement what his wife had said. 
 
 They nodded their heads very wisely. "Follow the tracks 
 of the tornac that came as a bear — and he will find milk 
 for the child," they said. "Without milk the babe will die, 
 for none of our wives have young at their breasts. Go into 
 the wild, Tweegock, before hunger comes on the babe." 
 
 Tweegock and his older son, a boy of twelve, started 
 out together. There seemed nothing strange to anyone in 
 
134 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 the departure. The two would find the tornac — the spirit 
 that had spoken through the lips of the bear ; and somewhere 
 in the rocky waste they would find substance to keep the 
 child alive. They trusted absolutely. They carried their 
 spears and bird-darts, however, for although the tornac was 
 friendly, they did not feel like meeting him unarmed. Both 
 were rather wide-eyed and silent, and their cheeks were 
 flushed so that their fellow tribesmen could see the red 
 through the brown. It is an exciting thing to seek spirits. 
 Anything in the world might befall them before they re- 
 turned. 
 
 "We may go to the Arsissut too," they said. 
 
 They followed the track of the bear that had spoken 
 to Tweegock's wife, and the trail led them over a ridge 
 and into a valley. They walked in silence, one behind 
 the other. Although neither of them cared to mention 
 the fact, they held their harpoons ready to fling at an in- 
 stant's notice. The snow was mostly gone, and the track- 
 ing would have been practically impossible to an Anglo- 
 Saxon. But these two little brown Innuits followed it 
 with ease. 
 
 "We are getting nearer," Tweegock said at last. "Soon 
 we will find him waiting — and perhaps he will talk to me 
 too." 
 
 His son nodded gravely; and they began to follow up a 
 little snow river that rippled down from a snow bank to 
 the sea. And then they came in sight of the bear. 
 
 Both of them gasped a little; and Tweegock's hand 
 trembled as he pointed. 
 
 "It is waiting," he said. "I will go." 
 
 For the bear did seem to be standing still as if undecided 
 which of two impulses to obey. Usually the white bears 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 135 
 
 fled at first sight of an Innuit, but on this occasion 
 there was a particular reason why he wanted to remain. It 
 wasn't that he had any remarks to make to Tweegock. It 
 was simply that just a hundred feet distant a very large and 
 attractive dinner was lying in a pit in the ground. Musk- 
 oxen with calves as a rule are game too dangerous to be 
 attractive; but this time the ox seemed helpless to protect 
 herself or her calf. But the two Innuits were drawing 
 nearer; and the bear decided that the musk-ox would have 
 to wait till later. So he fled on, up the stream, and vanished 
 about the white shoulder of the snow-bank. 
 
 In a moment more the Innuits were beside the pit. 
 Within it was a young cow musk-ox with a calf; and for a 
 long time they gazed with glowing eyes. 
 
 "A musk-ox — with milk in her udder!" the man cried 
 at last. "Milk for my baby — just as the tornac said. I 
 will stand guard, and you will bring the men of the tribe 
 with ropes. And the babe shall live to rule all this land — 
 and the wolf will lick his leggings, and Tuk-tuk" (the rein- 
 deer) "will kneel at his feet." Then his gaze fell on the 
 little musk-ox calf that bleated pitifully from the other 
 side of the pit. "And see," the man cried, "this little one 
 shall be his brother — nursed at the same breast." 
 
 Ill 
 
 "I will name him Kayak — because he can be ridden like 
 a boat," said little Nenook to his father. 
 
 Old Tweegock nodded gravely. He never disputed his 
 little son. He was always just a little bit afraid of him. 
 Every member of the tribe — for several years before, the 
 little band of Innuits had become united with the remainder 
 
136 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 of the tribe — knew the story of Nenook, how he had thriven 
 on musk-ox milk, and how the creatures of the wild were 
 his friends. Even the priest, who claimed to talk with spirits 
 daily, watched the boy's growth with some measure of 
 awe. For never in the history of the people had there 
 been such a thing as an Innuit boy and a musk-ox calf 
 being brothers at the same breast. 
 
 The cow had never really submitted to domestication, 
 and in a hard winter of six years before she had been slain 
 for food. It had been the occasion of a sacred feast, wherein 
 the priest had marked the child's breast with her blood. 
 Her bull calf Kayak was not domesticated either, as far 
 as the tribe was concerned. Indeed, he was just as wild 
 a musk-ox as ever ranged the region of the inlet. But 
 he was none the less little Nenook's companion and slave. 
 
 They had grown up together. They had drunk of the 
 same strong milk, and almost died together the following 
 winter in one of the "starving times" that every so often 
 come upon the Innuits. They had been playmates when 
 Kayak was a wabbly calf and Nenook had not yet learned 
 to walk. They had romped together through the summer 
 days, and in the fall the calf had been taken with the dogs 
 in the southerly expeditions after salmon and birds. 
 
 He was a wild creature, and so was Nenook. In the 
 very beginning the people saw that his mother's prophecy 
 was coming true. He did not play with other Innuit boys 
 — slow, chubby little fellows in sealskins, who had patient, 
 uninteresting games outside their mothers' huts. In the 
 first place they were all afraid of him. His daily rompings 
 with the powerful calf had developed his muscles far be- 
 yond all natural limits of a boy of his age, and he soon 
 learned that he must play gently with them. They were 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 137 
 
 not even strong enough to afford him sport. Nor did he 
 remain in huts and help chew the skins with the other chil- 
 dren. 
 
 They were outlaws from the very first, — the ox and the 
 boy. Both were magnificent specimens. Of course, the 
 beast was full-grown when Nenook was still a slender boy; 
 but for all that, Nenook was the master. The little touch 
 of domestication in the life of the ox had strengthened 
 rather than weakened him. Perhaps he kept in better con- 
 dition because of more regular food. In the winter, par- 
 ticularly, the musk-oxen suffer from hunger, as every mouth- 
 ful of reindeer moss must be probed for in the snow. Kayak 
 had a man calf with a man's keen and crafty brain to look 
 after him, and he gained weight in winters wherein many 
 of his breed had died. Every year he had grown heavier, 
 stronger, longer of hair and surer of foot. He stood 
 four feet at the shoulders, and that is the absolute limit 
 for the musk-ox. He was nine feet long from the end of 
 his three-inch sheeplike tail to the extremity of his nose, 
 and he had never had occasion to measure his strength. 
 When he stood off in the wind, and his long hair blew about 
 him, he seemed like a ragged, fringy thing of no shape 
 at all. 
 
 Most of the Innuit boys are thickly built and short and 
 awkward; and they have fat little stomachs always calling 
 for more tuck-tu or seal blubber. Nenook was not like this 
 at all. He was proportioned like a Greek athlete; and his 
 muscles did not knot and bunch like those of the mounte- 
 banks that lift hollow weights upon the stage in the United 
 States. They were smooth and rippling and scarcely notice- 
 able; and they were strong as steel wires. He had such 
 muscles as may be found in the thigh of a wolf, or the jaws 
 
138 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 of a hyena. He had black hair that grew long about his 
 shoulders, and his skin was a deep chestnut, rather than 
 red or copper. And he was taller than any boy of his age 
 by half a foot. 
 
 He was simply a wild creature, and he had the strength 
 and stealth and cunning that the wild creatures have. From 
 the very first he had no interest in the circle of huts where 
 his people lived. In the summer he would sooner have gone 
 to sleep in the cold sea than in the huts of his people. It 
 wasn't that he had any nonsensical ideas about fresh air. It 
 was just that he couldn't breathe at all in the sweat-box 
 tents. For the Innuit people light their lamps and carefully 
 cut out the least bit of air, and simply cook themselves the 
 whole night. They lie half-asphyxiated in the carbon dioxide 
 from the lamps, and they gasp all night like fish out of the 
 water. It doesn't hurt them a great deal, but nevertheless 
 Nenook's lungs hadn't become adapted to that sort of treat- 
 ment. He was accustomed to running a matter of fifteen 
 miles down the valleys in a single afternoon, the ox gallop- 
 ing along beside him, and his lungs absorbing air as a seal 
 consumes fish, — in large quantities. So when the sleep time 
 came, he and the ox would go out .to the encircling # hills, 
 and they would fall to sleep wherever fancy dictated. Some- 
 times it was a soft bed of moss, and sometimes it was simply 
 a hard shelf of a cliff. But if it were too hard, the boy 
 had no scruples whatever against using the great body of 
 the ox as a mattress. If the beast's hide had mud caked in 
 it, the fact did not matter. The Innuits aren't squeamish. 
 
 They would start together in the dawn; and the air 
 stirred their blood like wine. The people, harnessing for 
 the seal hunts, would see them start away; and the sight 
 always made them utter little wondering grunts and whis- 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 139 
 
 per together. And if the truth must be told, Nenook took 
 a boyish delight in mystifying these good people. He him- 
 self wasn't in the least mystified. It came just as natural 
 to him to run through the valleys beside a lumbering ox 
 as for his far-removed small-boy cousin in the United States 
 to take an all-day jaunt with his dog. It came perfectly 
 natural to him to learn to steal like a shadow over the 
 rocks in search of game, or to trace a polar bear to its lair, 
 or laugh at the wolf pack from a cliff top. 
 
 They would run until the boy was tired, and that might 
 be anywhere from ten to twenty miles. Running, for his 
 smooth muscles, took no more effort than walking. There 
 were no cliffs that these companions did not visit, no caverns 
 they did not explore, no steppes that they did not traverse. 
 They knew the hills as the wolves knew them. The seal 
 had no more intimate knowledge of the shore than they. 
 They knew the swamps and lakes as the geese knew them. 
 And all the time the boy was growing lither and more grace- 
 ful and swifter of limb; and the bull was growing heavier 
 and craftier and stronger. And when tired the boy would 
 climb on his broad back, and half go to sleep while the 
 ox loped back with him to the settlement. 
 
 But Nenook had enough sense of responsibility to the 
 tribe to learn to be a hunter. They had fed him, in his 
 babyhood, and he must pay the debt. By now he had 
 learned to steal like a wolf upon a flock of geese and strike 
 to the right and left before they could get on their wings; 
 or lie still as a figure of stone above the stream and strike 
 down like a whiplash when a salmon passed beneath. But 
 he did not permit the other boys of the tribe to learn hunt- 
 ing secrets that he did not know. He would go to the ice 
 floe with the men, and with a little practice he could hurl a 
 
140 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 harpoon almost as swiftly, and quite as accurately, as an 
 American can shoot a rifle bullet. 
 
 Almost before he knew it, he was the best hunter in the 
 tribe. He was still a slender boy ; and in the United States, 
 where boys grow up slowly, he would have been a mere 
 child. But the craft of hunting came as naturally to him 
 as running or sleeping. What other Innuits had to learn by 
 constant practice, he knew by instinct. He could track a 
 bear where the others could see but a naked stone. He 
 knew just how to operate one of those long-tailed harpoons, 
 ingeniously equipped with a bladder to wear out the strug- 
 gling seal and hold him up after death. He could kill more 
 birds with his hands, or with swift pebbles, than could the 
 other Innuits with their darts. And he was a master with 
 the rib-bow — the most deadly weapon the Eskimo pos- 
 sesses. 
 
 "You must learn the use of all weapons," his father told 
 him. "Sometime you may meet the Red People, and unless 
 you are swift of limb and strong of arm, the women will 
 never hear you come singing back again." 
 
 IV 
 
 All his life, so it seemed, Nenook had heard of the Red 
 People. They were the Indians that lived to the south, 
 against whom the Innuits had been at eternal war. The 
 two peoples had a traditional hatred for each other; and 
 when they met on the salmon streams or the caribou trails, 
 they always fought to the death. 
 
 But the Innuits tried hard not to meet them. The Red 
 People always outnumbered them, three or four to one; 
 so as a rule they contented themselves by praying to the 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 141 
 
 torno to send death and starvation upon them. But the 
 torno did not usually oblige them. The Red People lived 
 in more favorable regions to the south, and always they 
 seemed to increase as the Innuits died. 
 
 "But why can we not go and kill them one by one," 
 Nenook would ask. "Are we children — or babies — or simply 
 puffins on the rocks? Must we submit to their murders 
 until there are none of us left?" 
 
 But the older men would laugh at him a little, and re- 
 mind him he was but a child. Only his father, the strong 
 heart of the tribe, agreed with him. Yet the others did 
 not like to be reproached on this point. The very name 
 of the Red People filled them with dread. 
 
 "Wait till you are as old as we, Nenook, and you will 
 see," they said. "We cannot battle them. They are too 
 many." 
 
 But Nenook did not know what the words "too many" 
 meant. He knew enough of the wild to realize that any 
 advantage can be overcome by stealth and planning. And 
 he always jumped up and down with rage at the sight of his 
 fellow tribesmen standing in little groups and gazing with 
 frightened eyes and pale faces to the south. 
 
 He did not know the runners had reported that a tribe 
 of the Red People were migrating north, with the inten- 
 tion of driving the Innuits from their caribou trails be- 
 side the Lower River. 
 
 The wilderness is a book of knowledge with an infinite 
 number of pages, and the more of them Nenook turned over, 
 the more amazed he was at the number that remained. It 
 was the only book that Nenook ever saw; for the Innuit 
 people are too busy to care about printed books. Every day 
 
142 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 he learned new lessons of the valleys and hills and waters. 
 The wild things grew accustomed to the sight of him, lop- 
 ing along beside the ox, or else riding on the broad back, and 
 they began to think about him as simply a member of the 
 wilderness clan. They did not regard him as a man child. 
 Even the polar bear, great white creature that is one of the 
 nobility if not the king himself of the wild places, regarded 
 him with some measure of tolerance. Nenook had no fear 
 of him; and he pretended to have no fear of Nenook. But 
 nevertheless, somewhere in the back part of his small-sized 
 brain, he was perfectly aware that if it came down to cases, 
 Nenook was his master. 
 
 The wolves pursued him only once. There was quite a 
 pack of them, — a half-dozen rangy, gaunt, savage creatures 
 who were accustomed to having men and beasts flee from 
 their path. The boy and the musk-ox ran speedily awhile, and 
 the wolves loped joyfully along on the trail behind. But 
 all at once their prey turned and faced them. 
 
 This was out of accordance -with the nature of things. 
 Usually the musk-ox did not turn to fight until further flight 
 was impossible. The men they had chased at various times 
 never stopped at all until they reached their huts. These 
 two had come to bay squarely in the open prairie; and 
 they turned so suddenly that the wolves were almost upon 
 them before they could check their flight. 
 
 Kayak handled two of the pack. He caught one of them 
 on his horns, and the thing that came down looked more 
 like a rag than a wolf. The other he struck with his fore- 
 feet, and churned back and forth. 
 
 Nenook's attack had been somewhat different. First he 
 had thrown his harpoon ; and one of the gray crowd had 
 been impaled and fastened to the earth like a bird on a thorn. 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 143 
 
 Then before they could rush or attack, he had driven in 
 three arrows from, his rib-bow. 
 
 Two of them went home with curious deadliness and 
 silence. The last wolf leaped aside just in time. The others 
 had died so suddenly and swiftly that they had not even had 
 time to howl. And the only sound he heard as he fled 
 away was a musk-ox bawling his triumph, and a lean Innuit 
 boy hurling savage, laughing taunts at him as he danced 
 among the fallen. 
 
 Sometimes the musk-ox went with Nenook on the hunt, 
 and sometimes, while Kayak grazed, they took different 
 trails. Sometimes the two would have little sealing parties 
 beside the ice floes, for Kayak had been trained to carry 
 a bleeding seal on his broad back just as swiftly and easily 
 as the dogs could transport it on a sledge. They more than 
 paid for the food and raiment Nenook procured from the 
 tribe. 
 
 Nenook learned the secret habits of all the wild creatures. 
 No man in the North knew more of the caribou runs than 
 he. The ways of the great caribou herds is still a profound 
 mystery to many naturalists. They have certain lanes and 
 passes that they take through the dreary, snow-swept land, 
 and they can usually be counted on to return, year after 
 year. If an Innuit once learns these passes, he knows just 
 where to wait for his winter store of meat. 
 
 Every year, in the late summer, they would encounter the 
 musk-ox herds, and day after day Kayak would wander 
 with his breed. At such times his master either hunted at 
 the edge of the herds, or else remained with his tribe. When 
 the breeding season was past, however, Kayak was always 
 content to go back to the old happy life of roaming and 
 playing and hunting with his master. 
 
144 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 As yet Nenook had never encountered the Red People; 
 but he had heard enough of them to hate them beyond any- 
 thing in the world. He did not hate the wolves that hunted 
 him, or the polar bears, or any of the remorseless creatures 
 of the wild. But these Red People — they did not kill for 
 meat. They murdered for spite. It was their pleasure to 
 catch various Innuits far from their tribe and kill them in 
 terrible ways. Nenook's eyes would light and his strong 
 hands would clench at the tales his people told of them. And 
 he could never understand why they did not take their rib- 
 bows and their harpoons and settle the matter, once for all. 
 
 But the time was to come when Nenook should have 
 a personal debt to pay to the Red People. And that was 
 the first great war of Nenook's life. 
 
 He had been gone from the encampment a full week. 
 He had been on one of his long, wandering expeditions with 
 Kayak, and all at once he had remembered the smell of 
 the oil lamps and the drone of his father's voice as he sat 
 about a pot of blubber and told ghost stories. He was 
 not so inured to the wild but that he occasionally suffered 
 from homesickness. And all at once he had sprung up from 
 a bed of moss and loped off homeward. The musk-ox sprang 
 up and followed him. 
 
 They ran in silence, mile after mile. And at last they 
 reached the settlement. 
 
 The people called to him as ever as he passed their huts; 
 but their voices hardly seemed the same. They had a hesi- 
 tant, strained quality that he was at a loss to understand. 
 Usually they flung good-natured gibes at him, but to-night 
 no one laughed at all. Of course some sorrow had come 
 over the village. But yet the lamps were burning brightly, 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 145 
 
 as in times of plenty; and there was no evidence of plague 
 or disaster. They acted as if it concerned him, too. 
 
 He drew up to a walk; and it was a queer thing to 
 see him traversing the stretch of beach with bowed head 
 and puzzling eyes, and the hulking ox trailing at his heels. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked the first man he saw. "What has 
 happened ?" 
 
 But the man evaded him and turned his back. Nenook 
 was more bewildered than ever. Then he saw his older 
 brother waiting at the door of the hut. 
 
 The man was standing with bowed head, and the cus- 
 tomary smile was gone from his lips. His eyes seemed dark, 
 too, and strange. 
 
 "What is it?" Nenook demanded. "What has happened, 
 Brother? The people all act so strange." 
 
 "You are a wicked son of beasts, or you would have been 
 here to learn," the brother answered. "Tweegock is dead." 
 
 Tweegock was Nenook's father; and for a moment he 
 could not believe that he would never hear his droning voice 
 again. Then the tears came. He flung himself down on 
 the bed of skins, weeping inconsolably and miserably. He 
 had not even been in the hut to watch the spirit depart to 
 the realm of the Arsissut! His weeping was very real and 
 very bitter; for even these remote savages of the uttermost 
 North know human emotion and love. 
 
 "And how did he die?" Nenook asked at last. "Did the 
 ice break, or was it Awwk" (the walrus) "or sickness?" 
 
 For a long moment, the older brother did not reply. 
 Nenook looked up from the pile of skins. And at once he was 
 on his feet. For the man had turned his back to him and was 
 gazing soberly out the door of the hut. He seemed oddly 
 embarrassed too. 
 
146 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "How did he die?" Nenook demanded again. "Tell me, 
 my brother! If it was the wolves, I will trace them down 
 — one after another " 
 
 All at once the brother turned and spoke with odd, 
 strained tones. "It was not the wolves," he replied. "It 
 was not sickness — or Awuk — or the ice. He was bird snar- 
 ing in the south." 
 
 "The south " Nenook echoed. His heart seemed to 
 
 catch fire within him, and he grasped his brother's arms with 
 his strong hands. "Tell me! Was it the Red People?" 
 
 The other slowly nodded. "There is a tribe of them — 
 one hundred or more — come up to the Lower River, and a 
 dozen of their men came upon him at once. They killed 
 him, and left him lying by the sea." 
 
 The boy who went from tent to tent and asked that the 
 full-grown men gather with him in the council tent scarcely 
 seemed the same long-haired forest creature that had come 
 loping down into the encampment in the twilight. All 
 at once he seemed more like a man than a boy. The lines 
 of his face were like black slashes made by a knife; and 
 the placid dark eyes of the Innuits do not usually have such 
 fire in them as burned out of his. The men came, wonder- 
 ing. 
 
 They stood in a little group in the tent, and Nenook's 
 older brother talked to them. "This wild son of my father 
 that has come back wants us to go to war," he said. "He 
 has called us cowards, and children and women. He wants 
 us to take our spears and go down into the south — and 
 avenge my father." 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 147 
 
 They shuffled and grunted together, but for a while none 
 of them spoke. 
 
 "It is useless," the oldest man among them said at last. 
 "What can a handful of us do against a hundred? Our 
 men must stay away from the south. Tweegock went where 
 the wisest of us advised him not to go, and he dies. There 
 is nothing that we can do." 
 
 Nenook jumped up and down with rage. "Are you 
 women?" he demanded. "Are you not the men who kill 
 the walrus and track the wolf? Bah, even the polar bear 
 would do more than you ! Kill his mate, and he will follow 
 you to the hut. Would you sit still and have our men killed 
 one by one?" 
 
 "You are just a boy," they told him patiently. "We 
 are men, and we know we cannot fight against the wind 
 and sea; neither can we combat one hundred to our two- 
 score. You are a boy, and your tornac is a demon." 
 
 "Men!" Nenook sneered. "If you are men, let me be 
 a beast!" No one can be more scathing than the savage 
 people when they wish ; and Nenook's tongue was like a lash. 
 "Even Nenook, for whom I was named, would not sit still 
 in his lair and let his breed be slain! Bah! Go back to 
 your women." 
 
 They filed away, and for a long time the boy sat be- 
 side the lamp. His face worked, his hands clenched and 
 his heart was almost ready to break open with fury and 
 hatred. He trembled as if the cold was on him. And all 
 the time his keen young mind grappled with the hardest prob- 
 lem he had ever been called upon to solve. 
 
 The tribe was at least a score or two against one hun- 
 dred ; and yet the men were afraid even to attempt vengeance. 
 He was only one against a hundred, and he had not yet 
 
148 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 got his growth. Yet he had learned the value of craft. 
 He knew what cunning and forethought might do against 
 even tremendous odds. The lessons that he had learned 
 in the wilderness stood him in good stead. And all at once 
 he sprang up. 
 
 His brother had been watching him from the doorway; 
 and presently they were face to face. He hardly knew 
 his younger brother. The passion and the madness were 
 gone from him; and he was more like one of the wild crea- 
 tures on the track of its prey. He seemed singularly lithe 
 and calm, and he moved with peculiar, stealthy grace. His 
 eyes had been red. Now they were filled with white light. 
 
 The older man fell back a pace. "Kina?" he exclaimed. 
 ("What is it?") "You are not a man child, but a wolf!" 
 
 Nenook laughed softly ; but his older brother did not meet 
 his eyes. "Give me the wolf's strength — just for a single 
 night!" he replied. He laughed again, an odd sound that 
 filled the hut like the chortle of a goblin. "Mark my words, 
 brother. And now tell me — why are the Red People camp- 
 ing by the river?" 
 
 His brother did not understand at first, and Nenook had 
 to repeat the question. 
 
 "They are waiting for the caribou," the man replied. 
 
 It was just as Nenook had thought. He remembered per- 
 fectly the Lower River, and he knew that a certain great 
 herd of caribou, out of the waste lands to the west, always 
 followed the source of its water on their southern migra- 
 tions. The Red People were simply waiting for them to 
 come so as to procure a winter store of meat. The caribou, 
 as all men of the North know, are a large breed of deer 
 that comprise the greater part of the animal population of 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 149 
 
 the Barren Lands. They wander in vast, shadowy herds 
 and comprise the Innuits' chief source of meat. 
 
 "And what if they did not come?" Nenook whispered. 
 His lips curled, and his brother could see his white teeth. 
 
 "But they always do come. They will be there within 
 a day or two at most. You remember, Nenook! The 
 herd comes through the We-we Pass, where the Lower 
 River circles through the narrow gap in the mountains, and 
 from thence they follow the River." 
 
 "But if they should not come — the Red People would 
 die!" 
 
 "Yes — many would die, and the few that remained would 
 have to move their quarters. It grows late, and it would 
 be a mighty task before the snow comes. But the caribou 
 will be upon them soon. They are due now; and never are 
 they more than five days late." 
 
 "And the We-we Pass is over the rocky hills — a trail 
 that no man may go in the cycle of the moon!" Nenook 
 laughed again, savagely, and all at once he seized a seal 
 harpoon from the rack that held it above his head. It had 
 the thong and the inflated bladder at the end. "Listen, 
 brother," Nenook went on. "Will you help me — just for 
 a single day? I cannot linger to do this thing myself. Per- 
 haps I am too late now. You are skilled with berry juice 
 and brush. I want you to write a letter." 
 
 The only letters that the Innuits could write were of 
 course just series of pictures; but some of the tribesmen 
 possessed considerable skill at drawing these. "There is no 
 joy in vengeance that is not recognized as vengeance," Ne- 
 nook whispered. "The Red People must know who it is 
 that strikes, or the blow is wasted. That is the message 
 you must send. You must come in the night and throw 
 
150 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 the spear into their settlement. They will know it is an 
 Innuit spear. And on the bladder you will portray the 
 murder that they did — beside the sea. And then, with 
 your own skill, let them know that they will pay for it 
 with their own blood!" The boy began to dance up and 
 down in his hatred. "Every man and every woman and 
 every child. Their dogs will die in the snow. Their lamps 
 will burn out. That is what you must tell them in the letter, 
 brother — and I go!" 
 
 Going to his own hut Nenook hacked out a great piece 
 of frozen blubber, and swung it in a bird-skin sack over 
 his shoulder. He took his rib-bow, too, and his harpoon. 
 In a moment more he was standing beside the musk-ox, 
 his dark face to the west. 
 
 "Where do you go?" his brother asked. "Remember 
 — you are still a boy." 
 
 "My manhood has come upon me in a day — but I did 
 not find it here," Nenook answered. "I go to make war 
 on the Red People — just Kayak and I." 
 
 The first part of the journey was no trial whatever to 
 the strength of either of them. They were used to running 
 out across the valley; and even the wild creatures that saw 
 them come gave them scarcely a second glance. The boy 
 ran in front, easily, swiftly; and the ox thundered be- 
 hind. With his short legs and heavy body, the creature 
 seemed to move with great expenditure of energy; but in 
 reality running was an easier task to him than to his master. 
 
 The wild geese, circling endlessly overhead, saw them 
 come; and they honked down a greeting. Once the wolves 
 fled from their path; and once a small herd of musk-ox, 
 grazing in the darkness, looked after them. They went up 
 from the sea, toward the high range of moonlit crags. 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 151 
 
 Both man and beast were saving their strength the best 
 they could. They rested at intervals; for no one knows 
 better than the wild creatures how much time can be gained 
 by an occasional rest. At such times they relaxed utterly. 
 "My great Kayak!" Nenook cried. "Thank my tornac for 
 your muscles and your strength." 
 
 The night was still young when they came to the hills. 
 They were not such hills as tourists climb in the United 
 States. They had no roads, marking the easier grades, 
 and the only trails they had were narrow, winding pathways 
 made by the feet of the wild creatures. These hills seemed, 
 indeed, quite impassable. 
 
 The two halted at the base of the hills, and Nenook 
 stroked the great neck. "It is your work from now on, 
 great Kayak!" he said. "Brother, it all depends on you. 
 I cannot run over these hills. Only your sure feet can 
 carry me." 
 
 Then he leaped on the broad shoulders, and the tortuous 
 ascent began. 
 
 The hills were strange and still in the darkness. They 
 were inexpressibly bleak ; and the two seemed to have all their 
 tremendous spaces to themselves. On other night rides 
 they had felt the constant presence of the wild life in the 
 shrubbery and the grass and over them in the air. There 
 were usually wolves and bear and musk-oxen ; and the whole 
 nation of little creatures, — rodents and foxes and ermine. 
 But these hills seemed to be absolutely bare of life. There 
 were no puffins on the rocks. There was only silence, and 
 the Northern Lights in the sky, and the shadow of dreary 
 crags. 
 
 The Innuits said that only spirits, and evil ones, at that, 
 inhabited these hills. Nenook could readily believe it. 
 
152 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Yet his mount was especially fitted for such a run as 
 this. Its feet were as sure as a mountain goat's, and it had 
 wonderful agility besides its strength. The many miles they 
 had already come did not seem to affect it in the least. 
 
 "Kayak!" he urged. "Brave brother! You will win 
 for me yet!" 
 
 The beast was choosing its own trail. Nenook lay close to 
 the broad back, lessening wind resistance as much as he 
 could. The moon was out, and its light blended strangely 
 with the flickering bars of the Aurora Borealis. 
 
 They were in the high mountains now. They encircled 
 great beds of snow, and they traversed trails so narrow that it 
 seemed no living feet could cling to them, and they skimmed 
 the edges of great gorges full of the moonlight. Once 
 a fissure in the rock barred their trail, and a sob caught at 
 Nenook's throat. But the next instant he cried out in 
 triumph, for his mount had taken it in one leap. 
 
 The strength of the creature was ebbing now. The eyes 
 were wide; the horns seemed to flash; the nostrils were red. 
 It had been a test of strength that a musk-ox never endured 
 before. No mountain pony could have possibly covered the 
 same trail in a like number of hours. Even the reindeer 
 had not the sure feet and the agile body for such a climb. 
 The musk-ox partook of the qualities of the sheep as well 
 as the oxen clan; and to-night his sheeplike traits stood 
 him in good stead. 
 
 But the journey was almost over. They were descend- 
 ing now. The dawn was breaking; they could see the gleam 
 of the waters of the Lower River as they flowed through 
 We-we Pass. 
 
 And they were none too soon. For the first thing they 
 saw, when the dawn came out, was what seemed a slow- 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 153 
 
 moving wall of gray shadow advancing down the long val- 
 ley. The caribou herds were almost to the pass. 
 
 The work was not yet quite done. A herd of a thou- 
 sand caribou is not easy to turn from its trail by a single 
 boy with an ox. They came up silently, a slow-moving 
 army as silent as the wind. 
 
 But Nenook knew his ground. He had been here be- 
 fore, only of course on previous occasions he had come the 
 long way of the river. The caribou, to follow the river 
 down to the sea, were obliged to traverse a narrow pass 
 scarcely sixty feet wide. If turned aside, the only way 
 they could go was to skirt the edges of the mountains into 
 another valley — a trail that would ultimately take them 
 nearly one hundred miles from the waiting Red People beside 
 the Lower River. 
 
 Nenook had planned every step of his campaign. He 
 leaped down from his mount and swiftly went to work to 
 make a fire. In the pocket of his sealskin jacket he had a 
 little reindeer moss, dry as tinder, a flint, and a broken 
 piece of a knife blade that had passed through a dozen 
 hands to him from a trading post far to the south. A little 
 driftwood was strewn along the river, and he gathered all 
 he could find. 
 
 Working with sure, swift hands he collected armfuls 
 of dry lichens, and with these he started a dozen other fires. 
 And he built them all squarely across the narrow pass be- 
 tween the river and the cliff. The reindeer had paused by 
 now; and Nenook knew that his only hope of sweeping 
 them about the shoulder of the mountain and into the next 
 valley was to encircle them before his fires burned out. 
 They would never try to break through the wall of fire so 
 
154 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 long as an open road lay to the left or right. And only- 
 one thing more remained to do. 
 
 The principal fuel that the Innuits use is seal blubber. 
 It burns with remarkable fierceness and heat, either in lamps 
 or in an open fire. The lichens that made a flaming wall 
 across the pass would burn out in a very few minutes. So 
 just as he had planned to do, he took his thirty-pound lump 
 of seal blubber from his shoulder bag and swiftly cut it 
 into a dozen lumps of about three pounds each. 
 
 He flung one upon each of the fires; and once more 
 he sprang upon the back of his mount. "Just a little way 
 more," he cried. "Be brave, my Kayak! Just a little way 
 more, and the thing is done." 
 
 The beast was fatigued beyond words to tell; but he 
 responded bravely to the voice. They made a wide circle 
 and got in the rear of the herds. 
 
 Then raising his voice in a wild shout, Nenook charged 
 down upon them. He waved his coat in the air. He 
 was man, and these caribou knew enough of men to fear 
 them worse than any living thing. They broke into a 
 stampede. 
 
 But they dared not try to cross the wall of fire. They 
 hesitated, milled for an instant like logs in a stream, then 
 poured about the shoulders of the pass to the valley to 
 the right. And the caribou herds, once stampeded, never 
 retrace their steps. 
 
 Two hours later the boy and the musk-ox were still rest- 
 ing beside the river. Kayak stood with lowered head; and 
 the slender Innuit lad, who was more nearly a creature 
 of the wild, sat just at his feet. Far away they watched 
 the dim gray shadow that they knew was the caribou herds 
 plodding steadily down a strange and alien valley. They 
 
The Son of the Wild Things 155 
 
 would never come back now; and the Red People beside 
 the Lower River would wait for them in vain. 
 
 All at once Nenook got on his feet, shivering with his 
 hate. "It was two against a thousand — and we turned 
 them," he exulted. "It was one Innuit against one hun- 
 dred Red People — and I have had vengeance on them. My 
 people would not go with me, so I struck alone. The red 
 murderers will wait in vain beside the river for their win- 
 ter store of meat. And it won't come! Because of us, 
 Kayak, it won't come. 
 
 "Many will die before the winter is out. They will 
 have to change their hunting grounds, and where can they 
 go? They will know the snow, and the starving time, and 
 the ice will come before they can gather any other winter 
 food. Brave one, the debt is paid !" 
 
 He grew quiet, and his dark eyes scanned the waste of 
 Barren Lands about them. He put his brown arm about 
 Kayak's neck. 
 
 "We will be wild things, you and I — from henceforth," 
 he said. "Perhaps we will return in the winter months, 
 but from henceforth you and I will hunt alone. Yesterday 
 I was a boy, and last night I was a man, and to-night I am 
 neither one — but a creature of the wild instead. The people 
 would not come with me and fight my battle; so I will 
 not go to them again. We will live in the wild, you and 
 I, just as it was spoken that I should do. I have come into 
 my heritage at last." 
 
FURS 
 
 The Aikens' tent faced east and a little north, and there 
 was always a time in late afternoon when the sunlight flooded 
 through the opening in the rear. It looked as if it aimed 
 straight for their camp — coursing down through a rift in the 
 tall pines beyond the river, slanting down across the foam- 
 ing waters, and full upon the tent — and sometimes upon 
 the Aiken brothers, returned from their work on river 
 bank and hill. Except for this yellow flood, it might have 
 been very hard to get a clear view of their faces as they 
 played their game one day, sitting at a rude table just out- 
 side their canvas shelter. 
 
 For it is true that ordinarily the Aiken camp was not 
 well lighted. In the first place it had been built in the 
 shadow of the pines, — those tall, dark, forbidding pines of 
 the Oregon wilderness. And the pine shadow never seems 
 just an absence of light: it is like a dusky substance in itself 
 that the eyes strain to see through, and which can get into 
 a man's soul, after a certain number of years, and turn his 
 thoughts dark. It is the background on which the Oregon 
 wilderness — far and far in the Cascades — is laid. Be- 
 sides, the site was the very bottom of a gloomy and steep- 
 walled glen that never, even in the springtime, seemed to 
 give itself to the sun with that sweet surrender that is 
 seen by country dwellers in the plowed fields. It always 
 seemed dark, and the sunlight always an intruder, flicker- 
 ing nervously in the spaces between the trees and about to 
 
Furs 157 
 
 flit away. Even the white foam of the river, the brink of 
 which was just behind the tent, could not alleviate the effect 
 of gloom about the camp. Lastly, one of the Aiken boys 
 — the older and the stronger — was the kind of man that 
 never seems to emerge fully into the light. It was as if a 
 shadow — an essence from the brooding dusk of his own 
 thoughts — was ever over him. 
 
 But the moment's burst of sunlight illumined his face 
 quite clearly; and now and then, as his arms moved in the 
 game, it revealed his lean, dark hand. His was the face of 
 a hill man, and at first one would have been mystified by 
 the eyes. They were dark eyes, in which a man's strong 
 passions smoldered and glowed ; and perhaps they had some- 
 thing to do with the nickname by which he was known 
 through the Divide. Wolf Aiken was what the people called 
 him. The name was all over him — in the fierce eyes that 
 could also be cunning, the stealth of his motions, the sav- 
 agery that was about his lips, and most of all, in the lightning 
 strength of his muscles. They were not the kind of muscles 
 that gather in great bunches and stand out like deformities. 
 Rather, his legs and arms and back looked lean. The wil- 
 derness, whose child he was, had put its mark upon him. 
 
 This is a thing the wilderness is always doing. Sometimes 
 the mark is just a glitter in the eyes, as if the pupils had 
 been polished to steel points, and it goes with a peculiar, 
 listening alertness that once acquired is never lost. Both 
 things seem to be mostly habit, — the result of the con- 
 stant watchfulness that is soon acquired by all the dwellers 
 of the wild places. The men who do not acquire them are 
 merely transients, going out by such swift and certain high- 
 ways as an unguarded step on a precipice, or failure to find 
 shelter before a blizzard, or an attempt to swim the river at 
 
158 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 the rapids. These are all one-way roads, as the signposts 
 say, and the transients do not come again to commit more 
 blunders. 
 
 Wolf Aiken was a young man, scarcely thirty; but the 
 wilderness had already destroyed the outer marks of youth. 
 The skin looked very dark, the hair black and unkempt. 
 The lines of his face were already graven deep. He was 
 always alert, always swift and deadly of muscle and the 
 eyes of the buzzard in the sky were not more watchful 
 than his. Usually, in his work on the river bank, Wolf 
 was as cold as steel, but as the sun revealed him this April 
 afternoon, a curious heat and excitement had seemed to en- 
 gross him. He tried to suppress it, setting his muscles like 
 iron every time he played a card ; yet the gaunt hand trembled 
 ever so slightly; and a tiny glow, so faint that the eyes 
 could not be sure of it at all, lay on the dark skin of his 
 cheek bones. 
 
 Perhaps Buck Aiken, his brother, did not notice it. Pos- 
 sibly he was also too engrossed in the game. But Wolf 
 wondered at it himself. He had gambled before, always 
 coldly, always with a face inscrutable as a mask, and no 
 fire or passion had ever led him to a false play. The stakes 
 had been large, too; and here — he tried to tell himself that 
 the stakes were not worth the effort of the game. His 
 eyes wandered over toward them — the glossy, dusky heap by 
 the tent and it seemed to him that the heart within him beat 
 faster. 
 
 It was merely a little arrangement for the division of the 
 season's catch. They were trappers, the Aikens, and they 
 had just concluded the most successful season of their lives. 
 Furs were high; yet the mink and marten had been more 
 plentiful than at any time they could remember. The little 
 
Furs 159 
 
 dark heap of prime pelts represented better than sixteen hun- 
 dred dollars^-a good sum in the hills. And this afternoon 
 they were dividing the pelts between them. 
 
 As all furriers know, there is often a great difference be- 
 tween two pelts of the same species. Small blemishes, length 
 of hair, color and size, all have their weight. So Buck Aiken, 
 the younger brother, had suggested a simple way to secure 
 a fair division. He laid out two pelts at a time, the same fur 
 and as near the same value as he could determine. Then each 
 man drew cards from their soiled deck and the low card 
 got first choice of the two pelts. 
 
 The results of the game could not possibly make more than 
 a few dollars' difference ; and Wolf could not understand his 
 growing rancor at his brother's consistent winning. Through- 
 out the division only twice had Wolf drawn the lowest card, 
 and in each case the two pelts had been so nearly alike 
 that he could hardly make a choice. But many times, it 
 seemed, when Buck had won, he had noticed a pronounced 
 difference in the value of the pelts. It had begun to get 
 on his nerves. 
 
 It seemed to him, as they came up for drawing, that he 
 had certain mental associations with every individual skin. 
 It was not that he had known the living creatures that wore 
 them. The Little People of forest and stream are dear to all 
 real lovers of nature; but Wolf's only relation with them 
 was one of death. He had no mental picture of the living 
 mink — the white-toothed little slayer that followed moonlit 
 trails on the river bank — but he did have particularly vivid 
 images of each animal's death. 
 
 Buck was shuffling now — the last pair of marten skins 
 were up for the draw — and Wolf leaned forward with half- 
 closed eyes, carried back to certain little dramas on the river 
 
160 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 bank and upon the snow-swept hills. He remembered so well 
 each close-range shot with the killer-gun or blow with 
 wooden mallet — so close to the sparkling eyes — whenever 
 their victims had been found alive in their traps. When 
 the two brothers made the trap line together, it had always 
 been Wolf who dispatched them. Buck never liked to do it. 
 Ever since a child, he had retained a peculiar squeamishness 
 about such things that — although rightfully ridiculous — had 
 always seemed lovable to Wolf. Always Wolf had been 
 ready enough to do this task for him; and now he remem- 
 bered these killings, vivid in every little detail. And the 
 strangeness lay not only in the fact that Wolf remembered 
 every blow he had dealt, but that he remembered them — and 
 every detail of the little tragedies in which they were con- 
 cerned — with a kind of passion and ecstasy. It was the wolf 
 for which he was named, drunk with rapture over its fallen 
 prey ; and each pelt began to partake of a new and astound- 
 ing valuation in his eyes. 
 
 Again his gaunt hand drew a card, then flung it with 
 a curse beside the card his brother had drawn. Buck had 
 won again. He began to look over the two marten skins. 
 Wolf remembered one of them particularly well. The little 
 creature had been found alive in the trap, and Wolf could 
 almost hear again the slight tap he had given it with the 
 mallet. An inexplicable thrill of delight went through him 
 when he saw that it was the inferior of the two skins. Buck, 
 of course, would choose the other. 
 
 "You fool!" his voice suddenly rasped out. "The other 
 was the best skin!" For Buck, through some lapse of judg- 
 ment, had not chosen the one Wolf had anticipated. 
 
 Buck looked up with a question in his dark eyes. For 
 once he did not understand his brother. Wolf was evidently 
 
Furs 161 
 
 sincere, and it was a queer thing that he should seem dis- 
 tressed, rather than pleased, at his brother's error. He 
 chuckled a little. 
 
 "Ill keep it, anyway. You've been getting an edge the 
 worst of it. And now what about the fisher?" 
 
 Only one hide was left ; and Wolf's mind flew to it with a 
 startling and overwhelming passion. It was a glossy, beau- 
 tiful thing, the only fisher in their catch, and the most valu- 
 able pelt in the collection. For a moment the immediate sur- 
 roundings faded from Wolf's consciousness, blinked out like 
 a light, and left a river-picture that filled him with a strange, 
 quivering eagerness. It was down by the great whirlpool, 
 beyond the fallen pine, where the waters had undermined the 
 bank. Buck had not been with him when he found the 
 fisher, alive and ready to fight to the death in the trap. 
 There had been many blows that day. Life had been 
 tenacious in the beautiful body. But he had done his work 
 well, and had not injured the skin. And Wolf remembered 
 that afterward there had been a little flow of blood from 
 the animal's mouth ; he had seen it on his hand. 
 
 He had hardly noticed it then. The memory of it was 
 clearer than the fact itself. His eyes leaped over the furry 
 pelt, reveling in it; and desire was upon him. Buck seemed 
 to be speaking from far away. 
 
 "Why not draw for it — fair way as any," the man was 
 saying. "It's a prime pelt." 
 
 "Yes, shuffle 'em quick," Wolf responded. "Low card 
 wins, the same as before." 
 
 Once more Buck looked up, questioning. Wolf was speak- 
 ing in an unfamiliar voice, as if his attention were riveted 
 elsewhere. Buck followed down the line of his hungry eyes 
 until they rested upon the pelt. 
 
162 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "What you lookin' at?" he demanded. 
 
 Wolf seemed to recoil. "NothinV He reached out his 
 lean hand, with suddenly narrowing eyes. "Let me deal, 
 this time," he demanded. 
 
 Buck smiled at him. "Sure." He passed over the sticky 
 deck, and the cards worked through Wolf's fingers. It 
 seemed to his glowing eyes that the last card to leave his 
 fingers on one side was a three-spot, coming up as the card 
 nearest the top. He wasn't sure — but his heart leaped at the 
 possibility. 
 
 He held the deck out in his soiled hand. "Cut?" he 
 asked breathlessly. 
 
 "Let 'em ride!" Buck answered with a smile. 
 
 Without waiting for Buck to draw first, Wolf broke the 
 pack, lifting two cards from the deck. It was a chance, any- 
 way; and the dark face was alive with delight and passion 
 when he looked. He had drawn a three. 
 
 "Good Lord, what luck!" Buck gasped. There was no 
 hint of suspicion in his face. "But I'll never say die — " 
 
 He cut carelessly from the deck. Then he shouted with 
 boyish joy. 
 
 He had drawn the deuce; and he threw the fisher pelt 
 upon his pile. But Wolf had no answering shout of blas- 
 phemy. His emotion went too deep for that, and he only 
 stared with red eyes at the river, intrigued by the fury and 
 tumult with which the wild stream swept by their camp. 
 
 The night fell crisp and chill, — the kind of night that 
 usually made the Aiken brothers think at once of the comfort 
 of their blankets. The wind was an icy breath off the snow- 
 fields, whispering strangely in the trees and blowing, like 
 lips, at the fire. Yet neither of the brothers went at once 
 to his bed. 
 
Furs 163 
 
 Buck Aiken lighted his pipe and supposed of course that 
 his brother was joining him in this little ritual of friendship. 
 It was true that Wolf held his pipe between his teeth, and 
 in the growing shadows and the smoke from the dying 
 fire, Buck failed to observe that it was not lighted. It was 
 wholly possible that Wolf himself was not aware of the fact. 
 
 He wondered why his brother did not turn in. Usually 
 the boy, loving sleep, went quickly to his bunk. Often when 
 Wolf wished to sit and enjoy his pipe before a high fire, he 
 was scarcely able to keep the younger man awake. But to- 
 night Buck still lingered, and Wolf felt a growing im- 
 patience. He wished that his brother would go. 
 
 He didn't know why. The impulse went too deep for him 
 to see. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts, wanted 
 this with a curious, passionate eagerness. Again and again he 
 looked at his watch, pretending to yawn sleepily himself. 
 There was no conscious cunning behind the little actions. 
 They all seemed to spring from some dark part of him, an 
 evil genius that was in the ascendency. "If you're goin' to 
 set up, we'd better build up the fire," Buck said suddenly. 
 
 Wolf was cold himself, but he shook his head. "We'll be 
 turnin' in in a minute. Go ahead and get the bunk warm." 
 
 All men who have been in the wilderness have learned 
 the solace and comfort of a high, bright fire at night. As 
 the flames leap, the memory cords of a thousand-thousand 
 years begin to hum, and a man crawls out of his civilization 
 as a butterfly from its chrysalis; and the fire suddenly be- 
 comes a haven and protection from all the age-old terrors of 
 the darkness. The fire was man's first friend, and even when 
 the darkness no longer holds things to fear, when the eyes 
 of the last beast of prey no longer blink and glow in the 
 shadows, the memory of its cheer remains. It is hard for a 
 
164 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 man to break away from. Wolf had lied when he said he 
 would soon turn in. He simply knew that Buck would not 
 go to bed as long as the fire was bright, and he would rather 
 sit cold than have him remain. Besides, the coldness was 
 only at his finger tips and skin and feet, not in his heart 
 or his brain. It was as if he had a fire within himself. 
 
 He had no definite plans to carry out after his brother 
 was asleep. He only knew that he wanted to be alone, and 
 he had some vague idea of examining again the two piles of 
 pelts. He wanted to count them over, to feel the soft fur, 
 and perhaps — in his brother's unconsciousness — he would be 
 able to imagine a sense of possession not only for his own 
 portion but his brother's as well. A sleeping man cannot 
 own furs, he thought. They would be his, all his, — for the 
 moment at least. No one that lies still, with closed eyes, 
 could ever stretch a hand to the treasure. His mind seemed 
 to linger over the thought as if it loved it. 
 
 He glanced furtively at Buck; the younger man was busy 
 at some cheery plans of his own. His thoughts were not on 
 the furs, unless he was thinking of the money that his share 
 of them would bring. There would be gay times with that 
 wealth — eight hundred dollars for each of them. His eyes 
 seemed to be quite bright, not dark and brooding like his 
 brother's. Wolf scorned him in his thoughts, yet at the 
 same time he envied him. For did he not own half — the 
 better half — of the pelts? At least, he owned them now, — 
 until the night's sleep claimed him, and shut his bright, boyish 
 eyes. 
 
 "Them are sure fine furs!" Buck suddenly exulted. 
 
 For the first time the hot light went out of Wolf's eyes, 
 and left them icy and glittering. If Buck had seen the look, 
 he would have known no sleep that night. Only the black 
 
Furs 165 
 
 hatred of jealousy and covetousness brings that look to the 
 eyes of men. But Buck rose and shuffled to his cot; and 
 Wolf was left alone by the fire. 
 
 He waited until he thought the younger man was asleep. 
 Then he piled wood on the fire. In its bright light he was 
 able to make a close scrutiny of the deck with which they 
 had played that afternoon. He hoped that he would find 
 some indication of cheating on his brother's part, not wholly 
 understanding why he hoped so. Yet there were no marks 
 on the cards, no rough edges made by thumb nails, nothing 
 to which he could attach the least vestige of suspicion. 
 
 He got up then and stole into the tent. For a moment he 
 listened to Buck's heavy breathing. The man was asleep, the 
 dark face in repose, a smile about the lips. They could 
 smile, then, those lips, even in sleep, as if he were remember- 
 ing his possession of the dark heap of pelts beside the cot. 
 
 For a moment it seemed to Wolf that he could not leave 
 the bedside. He stood motionless, trance-like, scarcely 
 breathing, a strange cloud and murk over his thoughts. 
 Through the front opening of the tent he could see the glow 
 that the fire made, dimming and brightening as if by a pulse. 
 It was red, too. It was almost as red as the blood he had 
 shed to take the furs. Blood was always red and warm, — 
 like fire. Beyond, he saw the stars through the rifts in the 
 trees. 
 
 Buck had kicked off his heavy trousers before climbing 
 in between the blankets, and with them the belt on which 
 he carried his hunting knife. The trousers lay beside the 
 tree-bough pallet, and Wolf slowly bent toward them. As 
 his hands moved over the cloth, with a curious nervousness, 
 his knuckles touched the handle of the knife. He couldn't 
 keep them from it. 
 
166 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 The steel rib of the knife-hilt was cold; yet a flame 
 climbed up Wolf's arm through his veins. He stood erect 
 again, a long time, listening and watching. Again he bent 
 and drew the blade half out. His fingers seemed to lock 
 about it. He touched its edge; Buck always kept his knife 
 sharp as a razor. Then Wolf's eyes wandered to a little 
 exposed patch of bare flesh just under the curve of his 
 brother's jowl. But he pushed the blade back into its case 
 and stepped forth to the door of the tent. 
 
 The fire was almost in embers again, and its red glow went 
 out over the water. Wolf bent and lifted both heaps of 
 furs into his arms. 
 
 He carried them out and laid them beside the fire. They 
 were his, all his — until Buck wakened. They were beautiful 
 and soft and glossy ; they would bring much money in the fur 
 market. He began to wonder if any amount of money 
 would be great enough to equal their value, — to pay for their 
 softness and luster, and to make up for the blood he had 
 spilled to get them. They were his own, all his; for had 
 he not always administered the blow that had killed the 
 wounded? He had won his right to them by killing; why- 
 should Buck carry away half of them? 
 
 The trapper ran his fingers through the fur, and the mo- 
 tion yielded a curious excitement. Then he pressed the great 
 lovely fisher skin against his cheek. 
 
 It carried him back to the day and the place of the catch — 
 far up the river, where the wateTS had undermined the 
 bank. There was a whirlpool there in which no living 
 creature — except the Little People of the river themselves — 
 might live. It was a cataract, a wild, tumultuous place, 
 where the waters roared and broke against great rocks, and 
 even the salmon were dashed back and forth in their upward 
 
Furs 167 
 
 climb to spawn. He remembered now that black whirlpool; 
 and very slowly and carefully he recalled every occasion 
 Buck and he had passed that way. 
 
 He remembered that only on his last visit, when he had 
 caught the fisher, did he notice that the supporting earth of 
 the bank had all been washed away. It was just a green 
 shelf, extending out over the whirlpool, and possibly it had 
 already fallen in. He was curiously sickened at the thought. 
 But if it hadn't, the slightest weight would break it down. 
 
 There was even a wilder riffle than this, just back of the 
 tent. He looked a long time into the wild waters, fascinated 
 by the faint glow that the fire flung over them. They would 
 clutch a man, those waters; they would hurl him against 
 the great boulders of the river bed; they would carry him 
 away as sleep had carried Buck, — only from such a sleep 
 he could never awaken. 
 
 Wolf's creed was the creed of the beast for which he 
 was named, but it was also the creed of the river: to slay 
 all that could not conquer it. Wolf Aiken rose slowly and 
 went to the pile of steel traps that the two of them had 
 but recently taken up. 
 
 He moved among them very cautiously, so that the chains 
 would not rattle. He did not permit the passion that was 
 upon him to affect the iron control that his nerves had over 
 his muscles. Then he tiptoed to the door of the tent for 
 a last look at the sleeper. 
 
 Buck always slept soundly, never wakening until the 
 first light of day. Wolf left him and headed up the river 
 bank, a steel trap in his hand. 
 
 It was a long walk that Wolf made that night, but he 
 was tireless as the river beside him. It was as if the laws 
 in obedience to which the river flowed to the sea were no 
 
168 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 more commanding, no more inexorable, than those that drove 
 him up the bank that night. 
 
 He reached at last the outstretching bank over the whirl- 
 pool where the fisher had been caught. No, it had not yet 
 fallen in; and a careless eye, unless the observer climbed 
 down the bank to the water's edge below or above the place, 
 would never see that its supporting earth had been under- 
 mined. 
 
 Wolf picked up a long, dry piece of driftwood — a slender 
 dead limb of a pine, and looped the chain of the trap over its 
 end. Then he crept as near as he dared to the overhanging 
 bank, and carefully lifted the trap clear to its edge. 
 
 As he lay there, crouched and trembling, the old buck that 
 fed on the hillsides might have mistaken him for the gray 
 wolf itself, that remorseless slayer for which he was named, 
 crouched in ambush on the deer trail. 
 
 Never had Wolf cooked the breakfast better. His hands 
 were steady and sure. No telltale flush was on his face. 
 And he waited until an hour after breakfast before he began 
 the morning's business. 
 
 He sauntered over to the pile of traps and began to look 
 them over. He tested the springs of some; he jerked the 
 chains of others in his hands. Then he looked up ques- 
 tioningly. 
 
 "Buck, where's that old Number 215 that caught the 
 fisher?" 
 
 The younger Aiken looked up. "It's right there. Ain't 
 gone blind, have you, Wolf?" 
 
 One little line about the older man's mouth quivered — 
 ever so slightly. "Well, it ain't. I guess I left it up the 
 river." 
 
 Buck strolled over. "But I thought I saw the old brute 
 
Furs 169 
 
 just yesterday." He kicked the pile of traps. "But it aint 
 here. I must have seen another. I guess you left it." 
 
 For a moment Wolf seemed to be trying to recollect. "Of 
 course ! You know the big pine across the river — where we 
 caught that last mink?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "There's a green bank just above. Ain't more than a mile 
 from here. It must be lying on the bank where I dropped 
 it, when I stopped to loop up the others. There's a little 
 brush between the tree and the spot, but you can circle 
 the brush and come right out to it. If you ain't got nothin' 
 better to do, you might go and get it — and maybe pick off 
 a deer on the way." 
 
 Buck started to get up, and for the first time a quiver 
 passed over Wolf's frame. But his eyes drifted to the two 
 piles of pelts, and at once he was steady. Buck headed up 
 the river. 
 
 He turned just once when the brush had obscured his 
 body. Only the face suddenly showed through the thickets, 
 and it seemed to Wolf's eyes that it gleamed quite white. It 
 was only an effect of the sunlight — rare indeed in this somber 
 glen — but for an instant the face seemed to have the pallor 
 of death. Wolf stood still a long time, then went back to 
 the piles of pelts. 
 
 Wolf gave him thirty minutes to walk to the river, and 
 thirty more, in case of a failure of plans, to return. The long 
 morning passed, and at noon Wolf cooked himself his usual 
 midday meal. It was not that he felt hungry. But the cun- 
 ning of the damned was already upon him: in case some- 
 thing did go wrong with his plans, and Buck returned, 
 it would seem more natural to be cooking over the camp fire. 
 It might be that the younger man had misunderstood the 
 
170 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 direction and was spending the morning in fruitless search. 
 It would not do to arouse his suspicions now ; otherwise Buck 
 would be careful not to give him another opportunity. 
 
 The afternoon was long and still, with hardly a breath of 
 air in the pine tops. As the hours passed. Wolf's exultation 
 increased. Again and again his hands worked through the 
 piles of pelts, gloating over them, drunk with the knowledge 
 of possession. They were his, all his — for Buck had not 
 returned. 
 
 Twilight is always a mystery in the mountains, and just 
 at the drop of it, Wolf started up the river. It was well to 
 pretend to make a search, he thought : he would be able to tell 
 the curious in the valley below how he had hunted over all 
 the hills, and be able to prove it if he wished. He hastened 
 through the heavy brush. 
 
 At the edge of the fallen pine, he drew up with a sudden 
 jerk. He knew here his first moment of terror. What if 
 Buck had discovered the deadfall in time and was waiting 
 with ready rifle for Wolf to come? It would be exactly 
 what Buck would do: for justice, in the mountains, is a 
 thing to deal swiftly. Buck would know that Wolf would 
 come to view his work, ostentatiously to make a search. 
 His sight would be true and keen along the rifle barrel. 
 
 Wolf waited a long time, while the shadows grew and 
 deepened around him. Already it was almost too dark to see. 
 Then he crept on. 
 
 He made a great circle, coming out on the other side 
 of the deadfall. And in a moment more he was at the brink 
 of the river. 
 
 The whole contour of the bank seemed changed. The trap 
 was no longer in sight; the long stick that he had used 
 slanted down from the bank, and the end of it, resting in 
 
Furs 171 
 
 the water, vibrated like a living thing. It startled him for a 
 moment. It was as if a finger were pointing out of the 
 whirlpool. 
 
 Fully six feet of earth had crumbled away. The trap, 
 of course, had fallen with the man who had stepped upon the 
 treacherous place to get it. Wolf cursed, a savage sound in 
 the gathering darkness. 
 
 He walked rather swiftly on the way back to his camp. 
 He wanted to be with his furs again, — to realize that they 
 were all, all his, with none now to claim even a part of them. 
 He had killed the creatures that wore them ; who else had a 
 right to them? Besides, the deepening darkness and silence 
 of the forest oppressed him. 
 
 He had a strange fancy that the river, by whose side he 
 walked, was racing with him. It was as if it were carrying 
 something that it wished to bring to the camp before he 
 himself arrived there. It was so white in the darkness; its 
 song was so prolonged and strange; it was so wild and in- 
 domitable. And for the first time Wolf began to wonder 
 how soon his brother's body would be found. 
 
 He had not considered this phase of the issue before. 
 Perhaps even now it was caught in one of the dim under- 
 passages beneath the fallen logs, from which it would never 
 emerge. Possibly it would continue down the river's wild 
 course clear to the settlements in the valleys. It would be 
 only a mystery there: no human mind could conceive of 
 the sequence of events that had led to the tragedy. 
 
 He reached the camp and at once built a roaring fire. 
 He told himself it was a signal fire, to guide his lost brother 
 into camp. He would be able to tell, in the settlements, 
 that he had taken every precaution to find his lost brother. 
 He did not know there was any other reason. He wouldn't 
 
172 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 have admitted any other. But the same deep-buried instinct 
 that is the basis for the love that all men have for the open 
 fire had its effect here: it was a haven from such dangers 
 as might be waiting in the darkness. He wanted its com- 
 pany to-night. 
 
 For three nights Wolf Aiken built high fires on the 
 river bank. During the days between, he made excursions 
 into the forest, always with the intention of traveling wide 
 and far, but always returning soon. Somehow, the forest got 
 on his nerves as it never had before. It seemed to him 
 that there were vast forces moving in it that he could not see. 
 There was a great purpose and theme in its silence, its 
 ineffable aloofness, but it was always obscured in a patch of 
 distant shadow. Besides, he wanted to be with his furs. 
 
 Not that he handled them much, after the first day. The 
 sense of possession was enough. He arranged them in one 
 heap and tied them into a glossy, beautiful bundle. With a 
 thong of buckskin he tied the bundle to the ridgepole, at the 
 very rear of the tent and almost at the brink of the river. 
 But every day the thought of their possession was deareT to 
 him. Soon he could leave the dreadful forest and take them 
 with him down into the valleys. Men would admire them 
 there, and many would try to buy them. He wondered 
 if any of these admiring men would try to kill him for them. 
 
 But his self-control was not so perfect that he could shut 
 out certain haunting memories. And all at once Wolf re- 
 membered that his brother had been a particularly able 
 swimmer. 
 
 The thought startled him a little. What if Buck had 
 been able to brave the current, to swim out of that terrible 
 whirlpool, and would sometime return to pay his debts? 
 What if Buck should be waiting now, in the thickets across 
 
Furs 173 
 
 the river, for the moment in which he might make amends. 
 He cursed himself for not killing Buck that first night while 
 he slept. 
 
 He began to wish that he could find the body, and the 
 wish grew until it was the greatest desire of his life. Bodies 
 usually rose after a few hours, he knew. Wolf began to 
 keep constant watch of the river for a figure that might 
 come floating by. He was almost afraid to go to sleep at 
 night for fear that it would pass when he did not see it. And 
 that would mean a whole life of tormenting doubt, a whole 
 life of waiting for Buck to return. 
 
 Fortunately he was able to watch the river perfectly when 
 he sat up in his bunk. It was a grim and eerie watch ! Far 
 into the night he would sit, wholly motionless, with eyes 
 straining into the silvered foam. He would hear its eternal 
 chant, — a song of hunger that could never be quite satisfied. 
 Ever the river seemed less and less a lifeless phenomenon of 
 nature, and more and more a living thing, a thing that ever 
 hungered and was never full fed. He couldn't keep up with 
 it. He couldn't watch it all the time. It seemed to him 
 that it was cheating him, trying to get ahead of him, running 
 ever and ever, even in the moment or two he slept. 
 
 He did have more rational moments. In these he was 
 usually able to convince himself that Buck's body had been 
 caught in some dim passage of the river bed, perhaps wedged 
 in between boulders or entrapped, like a fishnet, in driftwood. 
 Besides, it might have floated far past his camp the first night, 
 still beneath the surface. But always the old dread and 
 uncertainty returned. 
 
 Buck had been an able swimmer: Wolf could remember 
 just how he had looked when he struck off across the swim- 
 ming hole that they had played in as children. His body had 
 
174 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 always gleamed ; and Wolf could picture the same gleaming 
 body fighting through the torrents. He had used to dive 
 for long, breath-taking seconds, until it seemed to the watch- 
 ing boys that surely some disaster had happened to him 
 in the ooze of the bottom ; but always, laughing, he had risen 
 again. Wolf could still see his streaming hair and eyes as 
 he came out. What river bottom could hold him now ? 
 
 In a moment of vivid self-consciousness, he knew what 
 he must do. One more night would he lie in his camp, but 
 only one. In the morning he would go down to the 
 settlements and carry his precious furs with him. The river 
 could be forgotten then. The silence would no longer 
 follow him, and his dreadful watch would be over. After 
 all, it was just his dark thoughts. He would be all right 
 once he got out of the wilderness. 
 
 Wolf Aiken did not even remove his heavy logging boots 
 before going to his bunk. He wished to leave quickly in 
 the morning. He had packed his few belongings; the pelts 
 still swung from the ridgepole and could be easily strapped on 
 his back. The prospect of deliverance from the dark woods 
 gave him back, in a measure, his self-control. 
 
 He would not watch the river this night, he thought. 
 It had all been a fancy, anyway, the beginning of madness, 
 and nothing that floated on its water could keep him awake 
 to-night. He was desperate for sleep. 
 
 Yet he was not entirely sure of himself: there had been 
 nights before when he had resolved to sleep but had lain 
 awake to watch instead. To-night he reversed his usual 
 position in the bed, lying with head toward the rear of the 
 tent and the river, rather than the front. To see the stream 
 at all, he had to sit up and turn his head completely about. 
 
 The wilderness at night is almost always still; but to- 
 
Furs 175 
 
 night the hush that followed was so deep and strange that it 
 had a quality of unreality. The river still sang under it, but 
 did not in the least affect its absolute depth. Wolf, still at 
 the fag-end of his dream, heard his own blood booming in 
 his eardrums, and that was all. 
 
 It beat ever louder and faster, until it seemed to deafen 
 him. There was a strange quality in the darkness, too, — a 
 breath-taking, groping horror that seemed to paralyze him in 
 his blankets. Some danger was waiting just without his 
 tent, even now crouching, and Wolf's long body jerked in the 
 blankets as he started out of his sleep. 
 
 He opened his eyes, blind at first to everything except 
 the great silvery patches that lay just outside the tent open- 
 ing. He did not know what they were. He didn't realize 
 that the moon had come up while he dozed. And terror 
 swept through him, through every nerve and into the last 
 fiber of every muscle, as a twig cracked just outside his tent. 
 
 The sound must have occurred the instant that he opened 
 his eyes, only an instant after the gust of wind. In his mind, 
 it was just at the river bank. He didn't know that he had 
 lost his sense of direction. He had forgotten that he had 
 lain down in his bunk in the opposite direction from usual, 
 and the rear of the tent was to him the front. 
 
 It is always hard to locate the exact source of any of 
 the little night sounds in the mountains. The sound might 
 have been any place within forty feet of the tent, but to him 
 it sounded as if it were immediately behind him, in what was 
 to him the front of the tent. The fact that the river sang 
 there instead of in front as usual did not clear matters up 
 in his mind. He gave no thought to the river, except in the 
 sense of what might rise out of it. He was listening too 
 intently to the other sounds. 
 
176 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 But it came about that in one little instant more, all the 
 sounds that the wild might utter could no longer draw his 
 attention. His eyes dropped down, just for an instant, and 
 for the first time he saw a long, strange shadow on the 
 tent floor. He gazed at it with growing horror. For the 
 shadow wavered — in all that world of silence and immobility, 
 it wavered to and fro. 
 
 There was only one thing that could cast a shadow like 
 that. Some form in the doorway, straight and tall, had inter- 
 cepted the flood of moonlight through the tent opening. 
 A sound is only a vibration in the air, a thing in which any 
 man might be deceived, but this was reality. He seemed to 
 know that some figure had come and was standing in the 
 front opening of the tent, its eyes upon him. 
 
 "It's Buck, come back," his hoarse whisper spoke. 
 
 Whether Buck had returned — risen like the swimmer he 
 was — out of the cataract, or whether he had never fallen into 
 the trap, did not make any difference. He would have the 
 same debts to pay, the same remorseless punishment to in- 
 flict. Whether life was in him didn't matter in the least. 
 He had come to get his furs. With a wild, half-strangled 
 cry, Wolf leaped to his feet. 
 
 The sharp blade caught the moonlight and glittered in his 
 hand. It made a streak of light as Wolf leaped the length 
 of the tent. There was a great dark shape, just as he knew 
 there would be, between him and the moonlit opening of the 
 tent. It was the thing that had cast the shadow, and Wolf 
 did not take time to notice anything except its outline. He 
 simply beheld it as he lunged from the bed, and in blind 
 terror he hurled himself against it with descending knife. 
 
 It gave before him, swinging out beneath his body, and 
 wood cracked sharply beneath him. Then there was a sense 
 
Furs 177 
 
 of vast and immeasurable disaster, a great falling and rock- 
 ing and hovering at the edge of nothingness. And in the 
 little fraction of a second before the end, Wolf knew the 
 truth. 
 
 The wilderness vengeance would not have been complete, 
 if he had not known. The gust of wind, when it had 
 shaken the pine tops, had also swung back and forth the 
 bundle of furs that hung from Wolf's ridgepole. Startled 
 out of his dream, he had seen the wavering of the shadow 
 that the furs cast on the tent floor; he had seen their dark 
 outline as he leaped, and he had hurled his weight against 
 them. 
 
 It was the rear of the tent — at the brink of the river — not 
 the front, as he had thought. His arms went about the 
 bundle of furs, but they could not check the force of his leap. 
 They swung out; the pressure on the ridgepole pulled the 
 tent from its supporting poles, and canvas and all plunged 
 with him into the river. 
 
 There was no swimming in that current. The canvas 
 clung about him, swept over him and held him fast, and the 
 arms of the river seized him with resistless power. They 
 hurled him here and there like a straw. 
 
 So he did not try. The moon still shone, its soft light 
 enchanting the wilderness ; and the river — the deathless spirit 
 of the wild itself — sang on. 
 
 Here and there the little water people — the mink and the 
 great trout — scurried away in fright as a dark something 
 was swept down past their dim haunts. The canvas of the 
 tent still enveloped his body, locking fast the embrace in 
 which Wolf Aiken's arms encircled his bundle of furs. 
 
LITTLE DEATH 
 
 There is always a gentle wind that blows through the 
 Divide just at the fall of darkness. It comes from the snow 
 fields, but whither it goes and where it dies no govern 
 ment weather men have ever taken the trouble to determine. 
 It does various things as it goes along, — pausing here and 
 there to wag the tops of the pine trees, like great sema- 
 phore signals to one another, brings certain smells and other 
 messages to the senses of the wild creatures, and plays a 
 curious song in the reeds of the river's edge. On this par- 
 ticular evening, Amos Hardman felt that it would also bring 
 in the cold. 
 
 But the man did not particularly care. It was true that 
 as yet he had built no cabin on his recently acquired farm 
 on the Upper Umpqua. But he had a tent on the very shore 
 of the river, and as all campers know, a tent can be made 
 snug and warm in the worst of weather. There were 
 plenty of warm blankets, and there was more firewood 
 on the hills about than any man would care to attempt 
 to measure in a lifetime. In fact there were hundreds 
 of miles of nothing but firewood. For one of the greatest 
 timber belts in the world sweeps on either side of the 
 Umpqua River of Oregon. 
 
 He would have no cause to fear the chill night that was 
 sure to follow. It would probably be the first frost of the 
 fall. Leaves in a moment struck yellow and red, falling 
 acorns and the first glint of the wings of the waterfowl, — 
 
Little Death 179 
 
 this was what frost meant to the high plateaus. It meant 
 even more personal things to Amos Hardman. He won- 
 dered if his cattle would suffer on the range, and if his 
 growing things would be killed. He busied himself about 
 the little farmyard. 
 
 The chickens were going to roost, and methodically Amos 
 Hardman counted them. There had been a full dozen when 
 they had mounted to their perches the previous evening. 
 Now there were just eleven. He called into the growing 
 shadows. 
 
 Just a moment he stood in thought; then he turned one 
 hundred yards up the river. On the green bank he found 
 what he was looking for, — a little telltale bunch of feathers 
 and curious dark spots on the herbage. The angry furrows 
 grew in the man's face as he bent to examine them. 
 
 With the care of a detective he looked at the tracks 
 in the soft dirt. He was naturalist enough to identify them 
 at once. "A mink," he said to himself. "The low-lived 
 little critter!" 
 
 It was all very plain. A mink — one of those bloodthirsty 
 little slayers that have hunting grounds on the waterways 
 — had made short work of one of his pullets. It was the 
 loss of a few cents, and it was even a greater blow to his 
 feelings. Amos shook his fist at the river. 
 
 "Hang you, I'll get you for that, if it takes all winter," 
 he cried. "You little bandit — you'll die for it yet. What 
 a mink was ever created for is a mystery to me, anyway — 
 the most worthless, useless, no-good thief in the world." 
 
 He turned swiftly back to his tent and obtained his 
 shotgun; then looked up and down the shore. He thought 
 he might catch sight of the robber. The shadows grew and 
 deepened; and soon it became plain that even Hardman's 
 
180 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 keen eyes could no longer detect a mink's body in the reeds. 
 He turned up the hill for a final effort, in a field that lay 
 nearly a mile from his tent. 
 
 "Most worthless critter in the world," he said to himself 
 as he started off into the shadows. "No use to anything 
 or any one on earth." 
 
 But although Amos Hardman had eyes trained to the 
 distances of the hills, there were many things indeed that 
 he could not see. He had lived many years among the 
 wild things of the forest. He was a kindly man, as 
 mountaineers go, and not swift to condemn. Yet there 
 were existences in the forest about him, the motives and 
 missions of which he could not grasp. Perhaps even Little 
 Death, the Mink, had his place in the scheme of things. 
 
 For there is a curious balance in nature. It seems to 
 be the plan of nature that no one species may be allowed 
 to overrun the earth. The ideal seems to be a world lit- 
 erally teeming with all forms of life, and that means that 
 a certain number of foes must be created for every living 
 form to keep the numbers of each in check. The stately 
 cougar and the larger beasts of prey are too proud to de- 
 vote much of their time and energies to the rodents and 
 fowl and such small people, and nature soon saw the need 
 of a new breed of meat-eaters to take care of them. So 
 she evolved a whole family of small-size, wiry, courageous 
 hunters and identified them with a little gland of astonish- 
 ingly potent musk in the body of each. 
 
 The weasels, the ferrets, the fishers, the martens — even 
 the despised mink — were members of this family. If Amos 
 Hardman had thought about this fact, perhaps he wouldn't 
 have been so quick to condemn its existence as useless and 
 purposeless. There were many things indeed he did not 
 
Little Death 181 
 
 know about Little Death; otherwise his tone might have 
 been different. He didn't know of the hundreds of rodents, 
 each destructive to his crops, that the mink took care of 
 every year. And like all men, he could not see the un- 
 folding of events. 
 
 If he had been able to, perhaps a moment's understand- 
 ing of the mysteries of existence might have come to him. 
 He would have known that every living creature has its 
 mission and its place, from the buzzards that follow the 
 dead, to old Woof the bear, grunting in the thickets. Some 
 were created to keep the numbers of some other breed in 
 check, some were to clear the ground of certain fast-spread- 
 ing plants, but the missions of many of them are too obscure 
 for the eyes of men to see. 
 
 Hardman did not think about these things as he climbed 
 the hill. He only thought about the growing chill in the 
 air and because he was only human, he listened to the stir 
 of the waking forest life about him. 
 
 Little Death was clever at many things; but most of 
 all he surpassed in keeping out of sight. It was the first 
 lesson his mother taught him, long ago in the grass nest 
 beside the river. "Never show yourself till just before 
 the leap," the old she-mink had said. And perhaps, antici- 
 pating even then the rapture of ripping out a jugular vein 
 with his ivory teeth, his wicked little eyes had glowed like 
 two rubies in the velvet fur. For the leap of a mink is 
 as swift, as savage a thing as is to be seen in all the savage 
 wilderness, and usually there is death at the end of it. Once 
 to see it is to understand how the little slayer won his name. 
 
 The same rule held when Little Death was the hunted, 
 rather than the hunter: to lie still like a little strip of 
 brown mud between the reed stalks, until it became per- 
 
1 82 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 fectly certain that his enemy had seen him and flight was 
 the only course. For Little Death had many enemies. Mil- 
 lions of women, all over the broad earth, offered much gold 
 for his soft coat. There were traps in plenty, all along 
 the Upper Umpqua; there were the greater beasts of 
 prey ; and the wide-winged marsh owls had unpleasant habits 
 of slipping up behind him when least expected. These 
 great birds had wings that were silence itself, claws that 
 were sharp and deadly, and many fledglings always hungry 
 for the flesh of the little people of the river. Even before 
 he had left the nest, Little Death had had nightmares 
 of the two blue eyes in the twilight. 
 
 There were not many human wayfarers along the Upper 
 Umpqua, but such as there were rarely caught sight of 
 him. And this speaks well for the little bandit's ability 
 to conceal himself. The few trappers and hunters that 
 came along were men of rather exceptional powers of vision. 
 Mostly they were lank, dark mountaineers who did not miss 
 a great deal of what was going on about them. Though 
 there is no more deceitful jade in the world than Mother 
 Nature, always pretending that her living creatures are 
 just patches of light and shadow, most of these mountaineers 
 had long since learned her wiles. If a tenderfoot should 
 pass within five paces of Little Death's body and fail to 
 see him, it would not be surprizing, but when Amos 
 Hardman, he who had lived forty years on the Divide, 
 did just this thing, it was something for the forest people 
 to talk about. One can even imagine a wise old king- 
 fisher, blue-coated policeman who had a beat on a certain 
 ripple of the Umpqua, squawking out this bit of scandal 
 to old Woof the bear, catching crawfish on the shore, and 
 
Little Death 183 
 
 the furry old fellow sitting back on his tailless haunches 
 and grunting with laughter. 
 
 But it was true that ordinarily, human beings completely 
 failed to see the little people of the river. Of course, no 
 one could fail to notice Woof, and dull are the eyes that are 
 not filled with delight at the sight of the black-tail deer, 
 drinking at the water's edge. When Whisperfoot, the cou- 
 gar, cared to show himself at all, no man in his right senses 
 cared to look the other way. And the glory of the elk is a 
 name. The little people, however, went mostly unobserved. 
 They were physically small, their coloration was highly pro- 
 tective, but most of all they were wary and elusive as so 
 many little shadows. Some of them were not mammals at 
 all; the great trout, for instance, that waved lazy tails 
 at the still bottoms of the deep pools. Farther down the 
 river a pair of beavers made engineering plans through 
 the long night, and the blue heron told a pair of little 
 ruddy ducks, flirting their tails in a certain shallow, that 
 the last of the otters had established himself at the neck of 
 an old slough. But they all were crafty and furtive and 
 shy beyond all telling, and most of them, like Little Death 
 himself, did most of their hunting either in the eery hours 
 of twilight or at night. 
 
 This particular twilight he came creeping forth from a 
 little bunch of tall reeds on the river bank. No one could 
 have guessed, one minute since, that the few yellow stalks 
 would have made such a perfect hiding place. The hour 
 was late, the light was dim, yet one little moment of close 
 scrutiny would have sufficed to completely change one's opin- 
 ion about Little Death. In a moment one would cease 
 to think of him as an insignificant little rat of the river, 
 and would know him for what he was, — a hunter and a 
 
1 84 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 killer, more blood-thirsty than a tiger, more cunning than 
 a fox, more savage than a wolf. 
 
 He was Little Death, the mink, less in size than a rab- 
 bit, but as fierce and terrible a hunter as is known in the 
 whole wilderness world. His little red eyes burned with 
 a wicked light as he took the trail. 
 
 Nature has been trying a long time to secure efficiency 
 in her various creatures. She has always been improving 
 her types and her methods have been sure but exceedingly 
 deadly. It was just a simple proposition of killing off, 
 by process of the survival of the fittest, all the less efficient 
 and incapable creatures. She has made mistakes, but few 
 of them remain to clutter up the earth. And once or twice 
 she has achieved a positive masterpiece. 
 
 The little animal that, serpent-like, came slipping out 
 upon the game trail beside the river was really nothing less 
 than a masterpiece of nature. No one could doubt it, to 
 see him in action. It isn't known that nature had any 
 efficiency expert to help her out, but naturalists do know 
 that this little beast of prey, in his own sphere, is as capable, 
 effective, and withal as deadly a hunter as ever followed 
 a trail. He is just as effective in a tree as on the ground, 
 though this fact isn't relished at all by the feathered people 
 that make nests in the branches. He is agile, fleet be- 
 yond belief, and ferocious up to his last breath. 
 
 As he came out from his hiding-place, he did not make 
 a false motion. No hare could have moved through the 
 reeds more swiftly than he. He really had no limits. He 
 could dart up a tree as quickly as a squirrel. He could slip 
 into a rabbit burrow or a hollow tree with the ease of a 
 ferret. If he wished, he could range far from his native 
 waters and keep equally well fed. And even the great 
 
Little Death 185 
 
 lake trout in the pool were no more at home in the dim 
 paths of the river bottoms than he. 
 
 Scientists can tell about his teeth — how perfectly they 
 are arranged and sharpened for a life of rapine. There 
 have been trappers, now and then, who have carelessly 
 gotten their hands in range of these same teeth, and ever 
 thereafter have spoken softly every time the name of Little 
 Death has been mentioned. The jaws are manipulated 
 with tremendous bunches of muscles, the eyes miss little 
 of what is going on about him, the nose is keen, and a 
 thrown blade could scarcely equal the speed of his leap. 
 Many and strange are the stories of his ferocity, his death- 
 less courage and, curiously, most of them are true. 
 
 A rabbit had bounded along the river bank earlier in 
 the evening, and Little Death had found his trail. Just 
 for an instant he stood up on his haunches, like a squirrel, 
 and if the light had been better one could have seen a 
 transformation in the fierce face and body. He seemed to 
 grow more furtive. The lips drew back, revealing a gleam 
 of polished ivory. But the most pronounced change of 
 all was in his eyes. 
 
 They suddenly became little points of reddish flame. Lit- 
 tle Death's blood was up. The rabbit was still far off, 
 but the blood-madness had already come upon him. All 
 flesh-eaters know this passion — a lust to heat the blood 
 and ignite the brain — but in none of them is it more pro- 
 nounced than in Little Death and his fellows. A tiger, 
 for instance, will often linger over its wounded prey. For 
 long hours it will administer terrible caresses with claws 
 and fangs, but this cold cruelty is unknown in the mink. 
 His passion is too great for that. All he knows is to slay, 
 
1 86 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 and slay quickly, with white teeth at the throat; then leap 
 to another victim. 
 
 Little Death stood shivering, with the fury and the 
 madness upon him. Then he started stealing down the 
 river. But all at once he halted and whipped about on 
 his hind legs. No human eyes could follow that motion. 
 For an instant he crouched, utterly motionless, and his red, 
 fiery eyes searched the deepening shadows. He wasn't sure, 
 but it seemed to him that a deeper shadow had flitted across 
 his trail. All his life, Little Death had known this same, 
 curious darkening across his path. He had wakened from 
 his dreams in the reeds in horror of it. It was made by 
 only one thing, — the swift passage of wings. 
 
 Little Death's eyes were keen; yet he could not see this 
 far. Perhaps forty yards distant, a shadow swept across 
 a single bright star that had pushed through the twilight 
 sky. But it was too dark and far away for even a mink 
 to see plainly. And so intent was he upon the trail that 
 he was willing to disregard it. 
 
 And disregarding this particular shadow was one thing 
 his mother had told him, every time the dark came down, 
 that he must not do. It was the deadliest of all the many 
 deadly mistakes a mink can make. For that shadow often 
 means the presence of Velvet Wings, the great horned 
 owl, that is terror itself to all the Little People. Velvet 
 Wings can come like a cloud, and his talons are death. His 
 voice alone, in the silence, is enough to strike terror into 
 all the little folk within hearing. But the silence grew and 
 deepened about Little Death, and he kept to the trail. 
 
 By now, the darkness was growing over the lake region. 
 The pines still stood in curious silhouette against the west- 
 ern sky, but the outline of even the close tree trunks was 
 
Little Death 187 
 
 blurred and indistinct. The river gleamed, ever so softly. 
 The reeds began their night song, that curious rustle they 
 make as the wind plays over them, a sound that lingers long 
 in the memory. All the forest world was wakening. 
 
 It was the hunting hour, and Little Death's passion grew 
 upon him. There seemed to be something in the air, a fever 
 and excitement that the night wind had brought on. He 
 did not know it, but farther up the slope Whisperfoot, the 
 cougar, was stalking his buck. There was no particular 
 way in which Little Death could know it, because cat-tail 
 feathers, falling on the reeds, make more sound than Whis- 
 perfoot at his hunting. Moreover, he is tawny and hard 
 to see in the shadows. If he had known, the mink might 
 have been more wary. The great cat does not ordinarily 
 attack such small game as minks, but like most other for- 
 est creatures, his habits are not entirely known and never 
 to be trusted. 
 
 And there was one other stirring creature in the same 
 little forest patch back of Hardman's tent. He was hunt- 
 ing too, but not for food. The lowering night had brought 
 the cold, and the breed to which Cold Eye belonged was 
 particularly susceptible to the lowering of the temperature. 
 Cold Eye was looking for a warm place to lie through the 
 night and must make haste. 
 
 He seemed to move with strange stealth, scarcely a leaf 
 rustling under him. Not even his broken-glass eyes were 
 visible in the shadows. He crept lower, down toward Hard- 
 man's tent. 
 
 But the man was still on the hills, and did not see Cold 
 Eye come. For certain very good reasons, Hardman would 
 have taken no joy in this visitation. For Cold Eye was 
 
188 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 known far through the forests, a creeper in the dust and a 
 seeker of warm places in the cold nights. He was the great 
 gray rattlesnake that had lain all day on the ledge. He 
 was old, the poison glands in his head were full, and the 
 forest creatures scampered off the trail to get out of his way. 
 
 He was angry because the deepening cold had driven him 
 from his ledge, and his savagery had grown upon him as 
 he progressed down the trail. He didn't understand the 
 gray wall that now had reared in front of him. He slipped 
 slowly under it. 
 
 Hardman was a mountaineer, brawn and bone, and his 
 bed was a pallet of boughs, spread on the ground at the 
 mouth of the tent. His blankets, two pairs of them, were 
 spread on top. And at first Cold Eye did not understand 
 them. 
 
 But slowly he slipped into them, into the warmth and 
 the darkness. Slowly he coiled, till at last only a gray 
 circle, deadly past all things, remained. He would sleep 
 here through the night, he thought. He would strike with 
 deadly fangs any one that came to disturb him. Only his 
 head was exposed. 
 
 On the hill above, Amos Hardman had finished his work. 
 It had been a hard day, and he was tired. He thought with 
 pleasure how he would swiftly remove his boots and trousers, 
 and leap between the blankets. 
 
 He would sleep well, he thought, at least if that worth- 
 less existence, the mink, did not revisit his hen roost during 
 the night. Yes, he would sleep well, for Cold Eye would 
 be waiting with bared fangs for any one who would contest 
 the bed with him. And all things slept well after Cold 
 Eye had spoken to them. 
 
Little Death 189 
 
 The darkness had fallen, by now, but the moon was up — 
 otherwise it would have been too dark for even Little Death 
 to hunt. It made a curious patchwork of light and shadow 
 on the trail; it worked strange miracles with the many 
 ripples and waterfalls of the river, changing them seemingly 
 to wondrous works in silver; it glinted on the tops of the 
 pines. The rabbit trail circled back, and Little Death had 
 made the circuit when the shadow fell again. But it was 
 behind him, and he didn't see it. Neither did he see the 
 two circles of blue fire that for an instant burned at him 
 out of the shadows. The trail was growing hot, and the 
 only emotion he had left was anticipation of the killing 
 that was to come. He had quite forgotten that Velvet 
 Wings also kept watch over this same hunting ground, 
 or he would not have sped forward so gaily. 
 
 Once more he paused to listen to a long-drawn howl 
 from the thickets at one side. It was a curious, angry, dis- 
 appointed sound ; and if Little Death's intellect had been just 
 a little greater, he might have understood. Whisperfoot 
 had missed his stroke. His paw had whipped down a frac- 
 tion of a second too late, and the buck was a streak in the 
 darkness by now. This was never soothing to Whisper- 
 foot's disposition. He was angry, and he didn't care who 
 knew it. The sound chopped squarely off in the middle. 
 
 But if Little Death had known the little drama that 
 immediately followed, he would have been really vitally 
 interested. Just in the last notes of his howl, a shadow had 
 suddenly leaped across Whisperfoot's nose. It is an old 
 saying in the forest that a cougar has always one jump 
 left in him. Whisperfoot had just that one jump, and 
 he gave it, fast as light. It was not very big game. It was 
 just a rabbit speeding in stark terror up the slope. But it 
 
190 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 had come too suddenly and was gone too quick for even 
 the cougar's lightning blow to overtake it. The long, 
 meat-hook talons dug into the earth a half inch behind the 
 little white tail. 
 
 Whisperfoot started to howl again, but abruptly bethought 
 himself better of it. He had an idea. It seems to be true 
 that no animal, excepting man, can really reason; thus 
 Whisperfoot's curious behavior can hardly be ascribed to 
 actual reasoning and foresight. Perhaps it was simply an 
 inspiration, — instinct developed to the last degree. Whis- 
 perfoot simply seemed to know that in just a moment some 
 beast of prey would come darting along that way on the 
 rabbit's trail. 
 
 He didn't know just what kind of beast it might be. 
 He didn't care. He was sufficiently strong and large to 
 master any other flesh-eater of the Oregon forest, unless, by 
 a liberal interpretation, one would call Woof a flesh-eater. 
 Were it a fisher or a wildcat or even a wolf, Whisperfoot 
 need not be afraid. And Woof, the bear, would no more 
 attempt to catch a rabbit than he would try to bite off 
 his own diminutive tail. He was quite a foolish old bear 
 at times, especially when the love-sickness was on him in 
 the fall, but he had never been that foolish. 
 
 The idea had no more than occurred to Whisperfoot, and 
 his muscles had set (because in animals there is no time 
 lost between an idea and its muscular response) than he knew 
 he had guessed the truth. Little feet came scratching along 
 in the dead leaves. They were coming swiftly and, indeed, 
 they were very little. But Whisperfoot had missed his 
 stroke and anything in the way of flesh was acceptable. 
 
 And if the bright eyes of Velvet Wings were watch- 
 ing from the sky, perhaps the great owl thought he was 
 
Little Death 191 
 
 to be cheated after all. He came winging down the trail but 
 a short distance ahead of Amos Hardman on the way to 
 his tent and his bed. 
 
 Little Death was running straight into the cougar's am- 
 bush. Whisperfoot would not miss this time. He would 
 gauge his stroke correctly. And except for one little prank 
 of the forest gods — those spirits whose sport it is to watch 
 the everchanging drama of the wilderness — Little Death 
 would have known no further adventures that night. Whis- 
 perfoot was crouched in the shadow but the moonlight 
 probed through and reflected in his eyes. 
 
 Just for an instant they flashed like singular blue electric 
 bulbs, two circles, close together, in the darkness. The eyes 
 of the mink were red with passion and blood lust — for 
 he was hot upon the rabbit's trail — but they were not so 
 blind that he did not discern the warning. Since his earliest 
 kittenhood he had known about the two blue danger sig- 
 nals in the darkness. 
 
 It was not that he had ever encountered Whisperfoot 
 before. Rather it was just a matter of instinct, an instinct 
 all living creatures possess, that such twin moons mean dan- 
 ger. The eyes of Velvet Wings himself had these same sur- 
 face lights; and that fact alone was enough to draw the 
 mink up short in his tracks. 
 
 If he had raced on twelve more inches, he would have 
 never got past the ambush alive. If he had stopped in 
 his tracks for one half of a breath, Whisperfoot would have 
 reached out a barbed paw and snatched away his life. But 
 he did neither of these things. Whisperfoot struck, but 
 before the paw landed Little Death had leaped aside. If he 
 surpassed at nothing else, he knew how to dodge, and his 
 
192 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 muscles were chain lightning itself. Whisperfoot struck 
 with his other paw, and Little Death dodged again. 
 
 The rabbit was at once forgotten. Little Death was 
 dodging for his life. Twice more the claws came down 
 within an inch of his furry body, and by now Whisperfoot 
 was striking all about him and he would have suggested 
 to Woof's grim sense of humor a human being vainly strik- 
 ing at a mosquito. Then Little Death gathered himself 
 for a great spring and leaped full over Whisperfoot's low- 
 hung head. Then he darted away through the tall grass. 
 
 Whisperfoot chased him, striking at him again and again, 
 but always when the paw came down Little Death was 
 elsewhere. The mink cut back, made a swift circle, and 
 a moment more was at the river bank. The cougar under- 
 stood these tactics. Once more he leaped at the brown 
 serpent in the air, and except for the luckiest chance would 
 have fallen into the river. And that would have given 
 the forest people something to laugh about for a half- 
 dozen moons. 
 
 Little Death struck the water with a splash, and was im- 
 mediately out of his sight. It was his own element. His 
 claws were semi-webbed, and he took the ripples like a 
 salmon. The chase had lost its terror for him. One hun- 
 dred feet down the river he pulled up on the bank, his 
 fur sleek and close-lying from the water. 
 
 He drew himself up, perhaps intending to utter his 
 chattering laugh of scorn at the cougar on the opposite 
 shore. Perhaps he was listening to the nearing footsteps 
 of Hardman, on the way to his tent. In fact, Whisper- 
 foot, angry and disappointed, was already slinking back 
 into the shadows as inconspicuously as possible. But Little 
 Death's laugh was never uttered. 
 
Little Death 193 
 
 He crawled up the bank into the very mouth of Hard- 
 man's tent and his little red eyes saw what Hardman never 
 could have hoped to see: the head of Cold Eye, the serpent, 
 stretching from the blankets. Cold Eye also had heard 
 the man's step, and was waiting with lifted head for 
 any one that came. 
 
 If any one of a number of things had been different 
 from what they were, a certain fight to the death on the 
 shores of the Umpqua would have never come to pass. For 
 it is true that few mink in their right senses would care 
 to attack a full-grown rattlesnake. In the first place, old 
 Cold Eye was a wonderfully efficient hunter on his own 
 account. His bulk was many times that of Little Death. 
 And even the meager intellect of a mink knew that one 
 little scratch of the loose-hung fangs was simply death 
 with just a few moments of quivering in between. 
 
 But Little Death was feeling unusually sure of himself 
 to-night. He had just extricated himself from the claws 
 of a cougar, and this was a legend to pass down to his 
 children. Besides, his blood was up from the excitement 
 of the chase. And lastly, he was angry all over at the 
 rabbit's escape. It would be hard to imagine so many 
 emotions flooding him at once, but their combined effect 
 was to put him on fighting edge. The sight of the rattler, 
 suddenly looming just in front of him, the blood-smell, 
 and the realization that there was the noblest game he had 
 ever faced was like a spark to powder. 
 
 He seemed to puff out. The wet hair erected all at once, 
 and in one second seemed to be dry. The light danced in 
 his eyes. The muscles set and contracted seemingly with- 
 out conscious effort, and he sprang fast as a light shaft to- 
 ward the serpent's throat. 
 
194 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Then there began the grim and terrible battle that the 
 little people of the river came out to see. Cold Eye was 
 not to be felled by that first attack. The head swayed 
 aside, then the long body lunged out. It came like a spear 
 comes, almost straight in the air and faster than the eye 
 could follow. Little Death rolled back and over, and both 
 contestants found themselves in the moonlight, clear out- 
 side the mouth of the tent. 
 
 Little Death got in his bite as the snake came down, but 
 he almost died to pay for it. Cold Eye's head whipped 
 back, and the mink's leap to safety was none too soon. The 
 flat head seemed to graze his shoulder. 
 
 Two of the most agile, the most indomitable slayers in 
 the whole wilderness world were matched on the river 
 bank that night, — cold fury on the part of Cold Eye and 
 savage ferocity on that of Little Death. The moon showed 
 the whole thing. The entire wilderness world seemed to 
 stop in its business and look. The two fought almost in 
 silence, so little sound that even the song that the wind 
 played in the marsh reeds was not obscured. 
 
 It is true that Cold Eye hissed as he turned to parry 
 Little Death's lunges. But it was only a faint sound, dying 
 quickly in the silence of the night and charged full of the 
 icy hatred of which the snake is the embodiment. And 
 perhaps the mink's light feet rustled and crinkled in the 
 leaves. It was almost as if he were dancing — some savage 
 dance of death about a victim — so lightly did he spring back 
 and forth. The whole fight was misty and unreal in the 
 moonlight: two strange figures in a dance of death. Only 
 once did the rattles sound : that far-carrying warning, sharp 
 and high, that is as menacing an articulation as is ever heard 
 in the wilderness. It was more than that. All that is 
 
Little Death 195 
 
 deadly, all the lightning perils that can fall so swiftly on 
 the dwellers of the Wild were symbolized in that piercing 
 note. 
 
 Little Death danced about him, lunging in again and 
 again: stroke and parry, gleaming teeth and darting head, 
 bunching muscles and lightning lunge, bite and scratch and 
 little wicked eyes burning out of the savage face. The ser- 
 pent was more stately, bowing almost like a dancer in a 
 minuet. He swayed gently, until he thought he saw his 
 opening. Then the long head would lunge out and thwack 
 down, and not even the eyes of the wild creatures were 
 trained enough to follow that motion. 
 
 Little Death seemed so lithe, so slender, so unbelievably 
 agile that he gave almost a reptile appearance himself. The 
 flat, savage head helped out the delusion; only the wicked 
 teeth revealed his true raptorial character. Cold Eye had 
 felt their sting a half-dozen times, but they had never 
 reached a vital place and the mink had been afraid to bite 
 too long and deep. The whipping head of the snake was 
 looking for just that chance. 
 
 Little Death's rage grew upon him with every passing 
 second. The hair stood straight until he looked three 
 times his natural size. Ever he leaped faster, ever his wicked 
 little eyes had a more lurid flame. Cold Eye, however, 
 still lived up to his name. Something glittered on either 
 side of the flat head like bits of broken glass, strangely 
 bright, but cold enough to freeze the blood in the veins 
 and paralyze the muscles. Little Death knew enough not 
 to meet those eyes. In a fight where it was leap against 
 leap, fang against fang, he had a fair chance of living to 
 tell of it, but a battle of eyes with a reptile was a different 
 matter. Little Death was a blood-spiller, but he didn't 
 
196 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 know black magic. For though naturalists deny it to the 
 chapter's end, there is a power in the gold, glittering eye 
 of a serpent, and for the little people to meet it is to be 
 frozen in their tracks. A cold priestess to all that is deadly 
 and merciless, — that was the serpent, fighting in the moon- 
 light. 
 
 It was an incredibly graceful thing, this battle on the 
 river's bank. Sometimes their shadows, as they hung on 
 the water's edge, danced off across the ripples. Little Death 
 hopped back and forth, now darting almost as Cold Eye 
 darted, now swaying on his haunches, now leaping, now re- 
 coiling, but always staying just out of the reach of Cold 
 Eye's lashing head. Mostly they fought in eerie silence. 
 
 If the serpent had been fighting any other creature than 
 a mink and had been in the least afraid of being conquered, 
 he would have sprung immediately into the water. It is 
 one of the ways of serpents to make a swift path across a 
 river. But he knew enough not to try these tactics here. 
 If the serpent were a water dog, Little Death was a fish. 
 The wild waters were the smaller creature's own element, 
 and he would have had every advantage. 
 
 Again and again Cold Eye got in savage blows, strokes 
 that didn't go quite true yet, in which the flat head had 
 pummeled the mink's sides; and Little Death was fright- 
 fully shaken and bruised by the furious jerk and recoil of 
 the long body every time he himself had been able to get 
 in a bite. But it is a trait in the nature of a mink never 
 to give up, once embroiled in a fight. This tradition of 
 their courage has carried far through the wilderness, not 
 without cause. His fury increased and with it his effec- 
 tiveness. Ever he seemed quicker of recoil. So absorbed 
 was he that he could give no heed to any other danger: 
 
Little Death 197 
 
 a dozen shadows could have flitted across the glinting river 
 and he would never have seen them. Nor did he hear 
 the descending feet of Amos Hardman, on the way to his 
 tent. Perhaps, with one little successful lunge, Cold Eye 
 could yet win the battle in time to go back to the blankets 
 to keep company with the warm human figure. Not that 
 it would be warm all night. Warmth dies from the veins 
 after the rattler's bite. 
 
 Once more the snake lunged out. It was almost fatal 
 to Little Death. The fangs combed the fur on his shoulder. 
 The weight and velocity of the head knocked him aside, and 
 the snake darted forward to strike again. And this was 
 a mistake. 
 
 The snake was not quite in the best position for a blow. 
 Too much of his length was already stretched out. But 
 the truth was, he had seen Little Death rolled head over 
 heels, and he had not quite the proper respect for the mink's 
 ability to recoil. "There are none so swift, so agile as I," 
 he tells the wicked-eyed little sons of him in the serpent nest, 
 and Cold Eye thought that he himself wouldn't have been 
 able to snap back to a position of battle before the poisoned 
 fangs could sink home. But he had failed to consider the 
 fact that a mink is almost, if not quite, a masterpiece of 
 nature. 
 
 It all transpired so quickly that even the little people that 
 watched the fight did not quite discern the details. For the 
 smallest, littlest fraction of a second, less than stop-watch 
 could measure, Little Death seemed to lie still from the 
 force of the blow. The snake's glittering eyes saw the 
 posture, and he lunged down far out, with the full force 
 and length of his body. But when he was in the air, a 
 
198 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 wonderful transformation occurred in the little, still hand- 
 ful of brown fur. 
 
 All at once, Little Death uncoiled like a spring. He 
 leaped to one side, at the very fraction of a second that 
 the head darted past. Cold Eye had sprung too far to 
 recoil. The white teeth flashed, cut, buried deep, and closed 
 — fairly on the serpent's spine. Cold Eye would paralyze 
 no more fledglings in their tracks. Although his clammy 
 tail would have certain motion for some hours, he was 
 simply and assuredly dead. The battle had waged out from 
 Amos' tent and the long body lay fifteen feet in the shadows 
 from the door. Little Death had lived up to his name. 
 
 He seemed very small but wholly deadly as he investi- 
 gated the wound. The blood-madness, of which the weasel 
 tribe are particularly susceptible, was on him even from 
 this cold blood. He chattered in his rapture and ferocity. 
 Once more he danced about the body, as if in triumph. 
 
 But the curtain had not yet fallen on the little drama 
 of the river. 
 
 In the middle of his triumphal dance, a shadow swooped 
 to the earth. So fast it came that there seemed to be no 
 break in the flood of moonlight. It sped out of the dark 
 sky, and it swept, faster than a man may sweep his arm, 
 along the moonlit river margin. And before the river peo- 
 ple could blink their eyes, the dead rattlesnake was left 
 lying still and alone in the reeds. 
 
 Velvet Wings, the great owl, had seen his chance at last. 
 He had dipped out of the air, swooped on his silent wings 
 over the battle scene, and even now was darting away with 
 Little Death held fast in his talons. 
 
 "The end of Little Death," the little people said, as the 
 shadow passed. 
 
Little Death 199 
 
 But it's a strange thing about the world that there is 
 always one more card in the sleeve of Fate. It was played 
 then. 
 
 There was an astounding explosion out of the dark- 
 ness. It wasn't just a small-sized sound, or even a fairly 
 large sound. It was an incredible bellow and roar that 
 seemed to make the air crack and rock about them. In the 
 silence, it was a sound to strike deaf all who heard it. The 
 little people simply tumbled over backward with astonish- 
 ment and terror. 
 
 The shadow that was over the river abruptly dipped in 
 its flight. It wavered strangely, and something fell out 
 of its talons, little Death's luck was with him after all. 
 He struck, not the rocky shore, but the glinting water of 
 the river, and Little Death was known far as a high- 
 diver. He was bleeding from the battle with Cold Eye and 
 from the claws of Velvet Wings, but neither of these things 
 had made him forget how to swim. He struck off boldly, 
 among the dim passages of the sunken logs, and sped to 
 safety. 
 
 And it was all because Amos Hardman had returned 
 with his shotgun. He hadn't come in time to get in bed 
 with Cold Eye. In fact, he didn't even know that the reptile 
 had called on him, for the serpent's body was obscured 
 in the shadows, fifteen feet distant. He came just in time 
 to see the shadow of the owl in the moonlight and, likely 
 enough, Amos Hardman was still thinking of his chickens. 
 In fact, it was one of the few subjects Amos Hardman — 
 and a good many other farmers as well — ever did think 
 about. Likely enough this owl was flying away with one 
 of them. 
 
 He had thrown his shotgun to his shoulder and fired. 
 
200 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 He hadn't stopped to take aim. He was too angry at the 
 threatened loss of his fowl. The report was the sound the 
 little people had heard, by which they were still almost 
 petrified from terror. The truth was that Amos had shot 
 very badly; otherwise he could have hardly missed the 
 great form of the owl. All he succeeded in doing was to 
 sink a few shots into the feathers and along the skin, and 
 the only result, besides terror, was a sudden relaxation of 
 the bird's muscles that caused him to dip in his flight and 
 open his claws. Of course the rascally mink had fallen 
 out, — safely into the river. 
 
 Amos Hardman heard the splash, and at first he didn't 
 understand why he couldn't see the clump of feathers 
 that would mean one of his fowls floating down the moon- 
 illumined river. But he did see a black head that for an 
 instant came up right in the middle of a glinting patch 
 of water. And he was smitten with horror at a sudden 
 suspicion that came into his mind. 
 
 "May I be strung up !" he suddenly exploded. "That owl 
 was carryin' off the mink — and I made her drop him!" 
 
 He turned into his tent, almost speechless with self- 
 wrath. "The ornery little thief," he roared. "The most 
 worthless, useless, plague-take-it varmint on the earth ! What 
 was he made for, anyway — blast his thievin', bloodthirsty 
 ways. I'll get traps and get him yet!" 
 
 If the mink, one hundred yards down the river, had 
 heard, he might have leaned back upon his haunches and 
 laughed his scorn. Why should he fear the traps of men? 
 They could only continue to give him a life of zestful 
 adventure. The years would pass, still to find him fishing 
 and hunting and thieving and fighting his deadly fights in 
 
Little Death 201 
 
 the twilight, — the very rogue and rascal that Nature or- 
 dained him to be. His useless existence would continue for 
 some time yet; while out in the shadows the last muscular 
 quiver of Cold Eye's tail had begun to die. 
 
THE ELEPHANT REMEMBERS 
 
 The hill-folk say that a great ghost-elephant is sometimes seen 
 in their deepest jungles, a gray-haired mahout is ever with him, 
 companion in his games and revels. — From the Memoirs of a 
 Traveler. 
 
 An elephant is old on the day he is born, say the natives 
 of Burma, and no white man is ever quite sure just what 
 they mean. Perhaps they refer to his pink, old-gentleman's 
 skin and his droll, fumbling, old-man ways, and his squeak- 
 ing treble voice. And maybe they mean he is born with a 
 wisdom such as usually belongs only to age. And it is true 
 that if any animal in the world has had a chance to acquire 
 knowledge it is the elephant, for his breed are the oldest 
 residents of this old world. 
 
 They are so old that they don't seem to belong to the 
 twentieth century at all. Their long trunks, their huge 
 shapes, all seem part of the remote past. They are just the 
 remnants of a breed that once was great. 
 
 Long and long ago, when the world was very young 
 indeed, when the mountains were new, and before the descent 
 of the great glaciers taught the meaning of cold, they were 
 the rulers of the earth, but they have been conquered in the 
 struggle for existence. Their great cousins, the mastodon 
 and the mammoth, are completely gone, and their own tribe 
 can now be numbered by thousands. 
 
 But because they have been so long upon the earth, be- 
 cause they have wealth of experience beyond all other crea- 
 tures, they seem like venerable sages in a world of children. 
 
The Elephant Remembers 203 
 
 They are like the last veterans of an old war, who can 
 remember scenes and faces that all others have forgotten. 
 
 Far in a remote section of British India, in a strange, 
 wild province called Burma, Muztagh was born. And 
 although he was born in captivity, the property of a mahout, 
 in his first hour he heard the far-off call of the wild ele- 
 phants in the jungle. 
 
 The Burmans, just like the other people of India, always 
 watch the first hour of a baby's life very closely. They 
 know that always some incident will occur that will point, 
 as a weather-vane points in the wind, to the baby's future. 
 Often they have to call a man versed in magic to interpret, 
 but sometimes the prophecy is quite self-evident. No one 
 knows whether or not it works the same with baby elephants, 
 but certainly this wild, far-carrying call, not to be imitated 
 by any living voice, did seem a token and an omen in the 
 life of Muztagh. And it is a curious fact that the little 
 baby lifted his ears at the sound and rocked back and forth 
 on his pillar legs. 
 
 Of all the places in the great world, only a few remain 
 wherein a captive elephant hears the call of his wild brethren 
 at birth. Muztagh's birthplace lies around the corner of 
 the Bay of Bengal, not far from the watershed of the 
 Irawadi, almost north of the Malay peninsula. It is strange 
 and wild and dark beyond the power of words to tell. There 
 are great dark forests, unknown, slow-moving rivers, and 
 jungles silent and dark and impenetrable. 
 
 Little Muztagh weighed a flat two hundred pounds at 
 birth. But this was not the queerest thing about him. Ele- 
 
204 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 phant babies, although usually weighing not more than one 
 hundred and eighty, often touch two hundred. The queerest 
 thing was a peculiarity that probably was completely over- 
 looked by his mother. If she saw it out of her dull eyes, 
 she took no notice of it. It was not definitely discovered 
 until the mahout came out of his hut with a lighted fagot 
 for a first inspection. i 
 
 He had been wakened by the sound of the mother's pain. 
 "Hail" he had exclaimed to his wife. "Who has ever heard 
 a cow bawl so loud in labor ? The little one that to-morrow 
 you will see beneath her belly must weigh more than you!" 
 
 This was rather a compliment to his plump wife. She 
 was not offended at all. Burman women love to be well- 
 rounded. But the mahout was not weighing the effect of 
 his words. He was busy lighting his firebrand, and his 
 features seemed sharp and intent when the beams came out. 
 Rather he was already weighing the profits of little Muztagh. 
 He was an elephant catcher by trade, in the employ of the 
 great white Dugan Sahib, and the cow that was at this 
 moment bringing a son into the world was his own property. 
 If the baby should be of the Kumiria 
 
 The mahout knew elephants from head to tail, and he 
 was very well acquainted with the three grades that com- 
 pose that breed. The least valuable of all are the Mierga, — 
 a light, small-headed, thin-skinned, weak-trunked and un- 
 intelligent variety that are often found in the best elephant 
 herds. They are often born of the most noble parents, 
 and they are as big a problem to elephant men as razor- 
 backs to hog breeders. Then there is a second variety, the 
 Dwasala, that composed the great bulk of the herd, — a good, 
 substantial, strong, intelligent grade of elephant. But the 
 Kumiria is the best of all; and when one is born in a cap- 
 
The Elephant Remembers 205 
 
 tive herd it is a time for rejoicing. He is the perfect ele- 
 phant — heavy, symmetrical, trustworthy and fearless — fitted 
 for the pageantry of kings. 
 
 He hurried out to the lines, for now he knew that the 
 baby was born. The mother's cries had ceased. The jungle, 
 dark and savage past ever man's power to tame, lay just 
 beyond. He could feel its heavy air, its smells; its silence 
 was an essence. And as he stood, lifting the fagot high, he 
 heard the wild elephants trumpeting from the hills. 
 
 He turned his head in amazement. A Burman, and par- 
 ticularly one who chases the wild elephants in their jungles, 
 is intensely superstitious, and for an instant it seemed to him 
 that the wild trumpeting must have some secret meaning, 
 it was so loud and triumphant and prolonged. It was 
 greatly like the far-famed elephant salute — ever one of the 
 mysteries of those most mysterious animals — that the great 
 creatures utter at certain occasions and times. 
 
 "Are you saluting this little one?" he cried. "He is 
 not a wild tusker like you. He is not a wild pig in the 
 jungle. He is born in bonds, such as you will wear too, 
 after the next drive!" 
 
 They trumpeted again, as if in scorn of his words. Their 
 great strength was given them to rule the jungle, not 
 to haul logs and pull chains! The man turned back to 
 the lines and lifted higher his light. 
 
 Yes — the little elephant in the light-glow was of the 
 Kumiria. Never had there been a more perfect calf. The 
 light of greed sprang again in his eyes. And as he held the 
 fagot nearer so that the beams played in the elephant's 
 eyes and on his coat, the mahout sat down and was still, 
 lest the gods observe his good luck, and being jealous, turn 
 it into evil. 
 
206 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 The coat was not pinkly dark, as is usual in baby ele- 
 phants. It was distinctly light-colored, — only a few de- 
 grees darker than white. 
 
 The man understood at once. In the elephants, as well 
 as in all other breeds, an albino is sometimes born. A per- 
 fectly white elephant, up to a few years ago, had never been 
 seen, but on rare occasions elephants are born with light- 
 colored or clouded hides. Such creatures are bought at 
 fabulous prices by the Malay and Siamese princes, to whom 
 a white elephant is the greatest treasure that a king can 
 possess. 
 
 Muztagh was a long way from being an albino, yet a 
 tendency in that direction had bleached his hide. And the 
 man knew that on the morrow Dugan Sahib would pay 
 him a lifetime's earnings for the little wabbly calf, whose 
 welcome had been the wild cries of the tuskers in the jungle. 
 
 II 
 
 Little Muztagh (which means White Mountain in an 
 ancient tongue) did not enjoy his babyhood at all. He was 
 born with the memory of jungle kingdoms, and the life in 
 the elephant lines almost killed him with dullness. 
 
 There was never anything to do but nurse of the strong 
 elephant milk and roam about in the keddah or along the 
 lines. He had been bought the second day of his life by 
 Dugan Sahib, and the great white heaven-born saw to it 
 that he underwent none of the risks that are the happy 
 fate of most baby elephants. His mother was not taken 
 on the elephant drives into the jungles, so he never got a 
 taste of this exciting sport. Mostly she was kept chained 
 in the lines, and every day Langur Dass, the low-caste hill- 
 
The Elephant Remembers 207 
 
 man in Dugan's employ, grubbed grass for her in the valleys. 
 All night along, except the regular four hours of sleep, he 
 would hear her grumble and rumble and mutter discontent 
 that her little son shared with her. 
 
 Muztagh's second year was little better. Of course he 
 had reached the age where he could eat such dainties as 
 grass and young sugar cane, but these things could not make 
 up for the fun he was missing in the hills. He would stand 
 long hours watching their purple tops against the skies, and 
 his little dark eyes would glow. He would see the storms 
 break and flash above them, behold the rains lash down 
 through the jungles, and he was always filled with strange 
 longings and desires that he was too young to understand 
 or to follow. He would see the white haze steam up 
 from the labyrinth of wet vines, and he would tingle and 
 scratch for the feel of its wetness on his skin. And often, 
 when the mysterious Burman night came down, it seemed 
 to him that he would go mad. He would hear the wild 
 tuskers trumpeting in the jungles a very long way off, and 
 all the myriad noises of the mysterious night, and at such 
 times even his mother looked at him with wonder. 
 
 "Oh, little restless one," Langur Dass would say, "thou 
 and that old cow thy mother and I have one heart between 
 us. We know the burning — we understand, we three!" 
 
 It was true that Langur Dass understood more of the 
 ways of the forest people than any other hillman in the 
 encampment. But his caste was low, and he was drunken 
 and careless and lazy beyond words, and the hunters had 
 mostly only scorn for him. They called him Langur after 
 a gray-bearded breed of monkeys along the slopes of the 
 Himalayas, rather suspecting he was cursed with evil spirits, 
 for why should any sane man have such mad ideas as to 
 
208 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 the rights of elephants? He never wanted to join in the 
 drives, — which was a strange thing indeed for a man raised 
 in the hills. Perhaps he was afraid, but yet they could 
 remember a certain day in the bamboo thickets, when a 
 great, wild buffalo had charged their camp, and Langur 
 Dass acted as if fear were something he had never heard 
 of and knew nothing whatever about. 
 
 One day they asked him about it. "Tell us, Langur Dass,'* 
 they asked, mocking the ragged, dejected-looking creature, 
 "if thy name speaks truth, thou art brother to many monkey- 
 folk, and who knows the jungle better than thou or they? 
 None but the monkey-folk and thou canst talk with my 
 lord the elephant. Hen! We have seen thee do it, Langur 
 Dass. How is it that when we go hunting, thou art afraid 
 to come ?" 
 
 Langur looked at them out of his dull eyes and evaded 
 their question just as long as he could. "Have you for- 
 gotten the tales you heard on your mothers' breasts?" he 
 asked at last. "Elephants are of the jungle. You are of 
 the cooking pots and thatch! How should such folk as ye 
 are understand?" 
 
 This was flat heresy from their viewpoint. There is an 
 old legend among the elephant catchers to the effect that at 
 one time men were subject to the elephants. 
 
 Yet mostly the elephants that these men knew were pa- 
 tient and contented in their bonds. Mostly they loved their 
 mahouts, gave their strong backs willingly to toil, and were 
 always glad and ready to join in the chase after others 
 of their breed. Only on certain nights of the year, when 
 the tuskers called from the jungles, and the spirit of the 
 wild was abroad, would their love of liberty return to them. 
 But to all this little Muztagh was distinctly an exception. 
 
The Elephant Remembers 209 
 
 Even though he had been born in captivity, his desire for 
 liberty was with him just as constantly as his trunk or his 
 ears. 
 
 He had no love for the mahout that rode his mother. 
 He took little interest in the little brown boys and girls 
 that played before his stall. He would stand and look 
 over their heads into the wild, dark heart of the jungle 
 that no man can ever quite understand. And being only 
 a beast, he did not know anything about the caste and preju- 
 dices of the men he saw, but he did know that one of 
 them, the low-caste Langur Dass, ragged and dirty and 
 despised, wakened a responsive chord in his lonely heart. 
 
 They would have long talks together, that is, Langur 
 would talk and Muztagh would mumble. "Little calf, 
 little fat one," the man would say, "can great rocks stop 
 a tree from growing? Shall iron shackles stop a prince from 
 being king? Muztagh — jewel among jewels! Thy heart 
 speaks through those sleepless eyes of thine! Have patience 
 — what thou knowest, who shall take away from thee?" 
 
 But most of the mahouts and catchers noticed the rapidity 
 with which little Muztagh acquired weight and strength. 
 He outweighed, at the age of three, any calf of his season 
 in the encampment by a full two hundred pounds. And of 
 course three in an elephant is no older than three in a 
 human child. He was still just a baby, even if he did have 
 the wild tuskers' love of liberty. 
 
 "Shalt thou never lie the day long in the cool mud, little 
 one? Never see a storm break on the hills? Nor feel a 
 warm rain dripping through the branches? Or are these 
 matters part of thee that none may steal?" Langur Dass 
 would ask him, contented to wait a very long time for his 
 answer. "I think already that thou knowest how the tiger 
 
210 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 steals away at thy shrill note; how thickets feel that crash 
 beneath thy hurrying weight ! A little I think thou knowest 
 how the madness comes with the changing seasons. How 
 knowest thou these things? Not as I know them, who have 
 seen — nay, but as a king knows conquering; it's in thy 
 blood! Is a bundle of sugar cane tribute enough for thee, 
 Kumiria? Shall purple trappings please thee? Shall some 
 fat rajah of the plains make a beast of burden of thee? 
 Answer, lord of mighty memories!" 
 
 And Muztagh answered in his own way, without sound 
 or emphasis, but giving his love to Langur Dass, a love as 
 large as the big elephant heart from which it had sprung. 
 No other man could even win his friendship. The smell 
 of the jungle was on Langur Dass. The mahouts and 
 hunters smelt more or less of civilization and were con- 
 vinced for their part that the disposition of the little light- 
 colored elephant was beyond redemption. 
 
 "He is a born rogue," was their verdict, and they meant 
 by that a particular kind of elephant, sometimes a young 
 male, more often an old and savage tusker, alone in the 
 jungle — apart from the herd. Solitariness doesn't improve 
 their dispositions, and they were generally expelled from 
 a herd for ill temper to begin with. "Woe to the foolish 
 prince who buys this one!" said the graybeard catchers. 
 "There is murder in his eyes." 
 
 But Langur Dass would only look wise when he heard 
 these remarks. He knew elephants. The gleam in the dark 
 eyes of Muztagh was not viciousness, but simply inheritance, 
 a love of the wide wild spaces that left no room for ordi- 
 nary friendships. 
 
 But calf-love and mother-love bind other animals as well 
 as men, and possibly he might have perfectly fulfilled the 
 
The Elephant Remembers 211 
 
 plans Dugan had made for him but for a mistake the sahib 
 made in the little calf's ninth year. 
 
 He sold Muztagh's mother to an elephant breeder from 
 a distant province. Little Muztagh saw her march away 
 between two tuskers, down the long elephant trail into the 
 valley and the shadow. 
 
 "Watch the little one closely to-night," Dugan Sahib said 
 to his mahout. So when they had led him back and forth 
 along the lines, they saw that the ends of his ropes were 
 pegged down tightly. They were horsehair ropes, far be- 
 yond the strength of any normal nine-year-old elephant to 
 break. Then they went to the huts and to their women 
 and left him to shift restlessly from foot to foot, and think. 
 
 Probably he would have been satisfied with thinking, 
 for Muztagh did not know his strength and thought he 
 was securely tied. The incident that upset the mahout's 
 plans was simply that the wild elephants trumpeted again 
 from the hills. 
 
 Muztagh heard the sound, long-drawn and strange from 
 the silence of the jungle. He grew motionless. The great 
 ears pricked forward, the whipping tail stood still. It was 
 a call never to be denied. The blood was leaping in his 
 great veins. 
 
 He suddenly rocked forward with all his strength. The 
 rope spun tight, hummed, and snapped — very softly in- 
 deed. Then he padded in silence out among the huts — a 
 silence that was all the more marvelous because of his ton 
 of power. 
 
 There was no thick jungle here — just soft grass, huts, ap- 
 proaching dark fringe that was the jungle. None of the 
 mahouts was awake to see him. No voice called him back. 
 
212 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 The grass gave way to bamboo thickets, the smell of the 
 huts to the wild, bewitching perfumes of the jungle. 
 
 Then, still in silence, he walked forward with his trunk 
 outstretched into the primordial jungle and was born again. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Muztagh's reception was cordial from the very first. The 
 great bulls of the herd stood still and lifted their ears 
 when they heard him grunting up the hill. But he slipped 
 among them and was forgotten at once. They had no 
 dealings with the princes of Malay and Siam, and his light- 
 colored coat meant nothing whatever to them. If they did 
 any thinking about him at all, it was just to wonder 
 why a calf with all the evident marks of a nine-year-old 
 should be so tall and weigh so much. 
 
 One can fancy that the great old wrinkled tusker that led 
 the herd peered at him now and then out of his little red 
 eyes, and wondered. A herd leader begins to think about 
 future contestants for his place as soon as he acquires the 
 leadership. But Hat! This little one would not have his 
 greatest strength for fifteen years. 
 
 It was a compact, medium-sized herd, — vast males, 
 mothers, old-maid elephants, long-legged and ungainly, 
 5'oung males just learning their strength and proud of it 
 beyond words, and many calves. They ranged all the way 
 in size from the great leader, who stood ten feet and weighed 
 nearly nine thousand pounds, to little two-hundred-and-fifty 
 pound babies that had been born that season. And before 
 long the entire herd began its cautious advance into the 
 deeper hills. 
 
 The first night in the jungle, — and Muztagh found it 
 
The Elephant Remembers 213 
 
 wonderful past all dreams. The mist on his skin was the 
 same cool joy he had expected. There were sounds, too, 
 that set his great muscles aquiver. He heard the sound 
 that the bamboos make — the little click-click of the stems 
 in the wind — the soft rustle and stir of many leafy tendrils 
 entwining and touching together, and the whisper of the 
 wind over the jungle grass. And he knew, because it was 
 his heritage, what every single one of these sounds meant. 
 
 The herd threaded through the dark jungle and now 
 they descended into a cool river. A herd of deer — either 
 the dark sambur or black buck — sprang from the misty shore 
 line and leaped away into the bamboos. Farther down, he 
 could hear the grunt of buffalo. 
 
 It was simply a caress, — the touch of the soft, cool water 
 on his flanks. Then they reared out, like great sea gods 
 rising from the deep, and grunted and squealed their way 
 up the banks into the jungle again. 
 
 But the smells were the book that he read best; he un- 
 derstood them even better than the sounds of green things 
 growing. Flowers that he could not see hung like bells 
 from the arching branches. Every fern and every seeding 
 grass had its own scent that told sweet tales. The very 
 mud that his four feet sank into emitted scent that told the 
 history of jungle life from the world's beginnings. When 
 dawn burst over the eastern hills, he was weary in every 
 muscle of his young body, but much too happy to admit it. 
 
 This day was just the first of three thousand joyous 
 days. The jungle, old as the world itself, is ever new. Not 
 even the wisest elephant, who, after all, is king of the jungle, 
 knows what will turn up at the next bend in the elephant 
 trail. It may be a native woodcutter, whose long hair 
 is stirred with fright. It may easily be one of the great 
 
214 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 breed of bears, large as the American grizzly, that some 
 naturalists believe are to be found in the Siamese and Bur- 
 man jungles. It may be a herd of wild buffalo, always look- 
 ing for a fight, or simply some absurd armadillo-like thing, 
 to make him shake his vast sides with mirth. 
 
 The herd was never still. They ranged from one mys- 
 terious hill to another, to the ranges of the Himalayas and 
 back again. There were no rivers that they did not swim, 
 no jungles that they did not penetrate, no elephant trails 
 that they did not follow, in the whole northeastern cor- 
 ner of British India. And all the time Muztagh's strength 
 grew upon him until it became too vast a thing to measure 
 or control. 
 
 Whether or not he kept with the herd was by now a 
 matter of supreme indifference to him. He no longer needed 
 its protection. Except for the men who came with ropes 
 and guns and shoutings, there was nothing in the jungle 
 for him to fear. He was twenty years old, and he stood 
 nearly eleven feet to the top of his shoulders. He would 
 have broken any scales in the Indian Empire that tried 
 to weigh him. 
 
 He had had his share of adventures, yet he knew that life 
 in reality had just begun. The time would come when he 
 would want to fight the great arrogant bull for the leader- 
 ship of the herd. He was tired of fighting the young 
 bulls of his own age. He always won, and to an elephant 
 constant winning is almost as dull as constant losing. He 
 was a great deal like a youth of twenty in any breed of 
 any land, — light-hearted, self-confident, enjoying every min- 
 ute of wakefulness between one midnight and another. He 
 loved the jungle smells and the jungle sounds, and he could 
 
The Elephant Remembers 215 
 
 even tolerate the horrible laughter of the hyenas that some- 
 times tore to shreds the silence of the grassy plains below. 
 
 But India is too thickly populated by human beings 
 for a wild elephant to escape observation entirely. Many 
 natives had caught sight of him, and at last the tales reached 
 a little circle of trackers and hunters in camp on a dis- 
 tant range of hills. They did not work for Dugan Sahib, 
 for Dugan Sahib was dead long since. They were a de- 
 termined little group, and one night they sat and talked 
 softly over their fire. If Muztagh's ears had been sharp 
 enough to hear their words across the space of hills, he 
 wouldn't have gone to his mud baths with such complacency 
 the next day. But the space between them was fifty miles 
 of sweating jungle, and of course he did not hear. 
 
 "You will go, Khusru," said the leader, "for there are 
 none here half so skilful with horsehair rope as you. If 
 you do not come back within twelve months, we shall know 
 you have failed." 
 
 Of course all of them knew what he meant. If a man 
 failed in the effort to capture a wild elephant by the hair- 
 rope method, he very rarely lived to tell of it. 
 
 "In that case," Ahmad Din went on, "there will be 
 a great drive after the monsoon of next year. Picked men 
 will be chosen. No detail will be overlooked. It will cost 
 more, but it will be sure. And our purses will be fat from 
 the selling price of this king of elephants with a white 
 coat I" 
 
 IV 
 
 There is no need to follow Khusru on his long pursuit 
 through the elephant trails. He was an able hunter and, 
 after the manner of the elephant trackers, the scarred little 
 
216 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 man followed Muztagh through jungle and river, over hill 
 and into dale, for countless days, and at last, as Muztagh 
 slept, he crept up within a half-dozen feet of him. He in- 
 tended to loop a horsehair rope about his great feet — one 
 of the oldest and most hazardous methods of elephant-catch- 
 ing. But Muztagh wakened just in time. 
 
 And then a curious thing happened. The native could 
 never entirely believe it, and it was one of his best stories 
 to the day he died. Any other wild tusker would have 
 charged in furious wrath, and there would have been a 
 quick and certain death beneath his great knees. Muztagh 
 started out as if he had intended to charge. He lifted his 
 trunk out of the way — the elephant trunk is for a thou- 
 sand uses, but fighting is not one of them — and sprang for- 
 ward. He went just two paces. Then his little eyes caught 
 sight of the brown figure fleeing through the bamboos. 
 And at once the elephant set his great feet to brake him- 
 self, and drew to a sliding halt six feet beyond. 
 
 He did not know why. He was perfectly aware that this 
 man was an enemy, jealous of his most-loved liberty. He 
 knew perfectly it was the man's intention to put him back 
 into his bonds. He did not feel fear, either, because an 
 elephant's anger is too tremendous an emotion to leave 
 room for any other impulse such as fear. It seemed to him 
 that memories came thronging from long ago, so real and 
 insistent that he could not think of charging. 
 
 He remembered his days in the elephant lines. These 
 brown creatures had been his masters then. They had cut 
 his grass for him in the jungle, and brought him bundles 
 of sugar cane. The hill people say that the elephant mem- 
 ory is the greatest single marvel in the jungle, and it was 
 that memory that saved Khusru then. It wasn't deliberate 
 
The Elephant Remembers 217 
 
 gratitude for the grass cutting of long ago. It wasn't any 
 particular emotion that he could reach out his trunk and 
 touch. It was simply an impulse, — another one of the 
 thousand mysteries that envelop, like a cloud, the mental 
 processes of these largest of forest creatures. 
 
 These were the days when he lived apart from the herd. 
 He did it from choice. He liked the silence, the solitary 
 mud baths, the constant watchfulness against danger. 
 
 One day a rhino charged him, without warning or rea- 
 son. This is quite a common thing for a rhino to do. They 
 have the worst tempers in the jungle, and they would 
 just as soon charge a mountain if they didn't like the look 
 of it. Muztagh had awakened the great creature from his 
 sleep, and he came bearing down like a tank over "no 
 man's land." 
 
 Muztagh met him squarely, with the full shock of his 
 tusks, and the battle ended promptly. Muztagh's tusk, 
 driven by five tons of might behind it, would have pierced 
 a ship's side, and the rhino limped away to let his hurt 
 grow well and meditate revenge. Thereafter, for a full 
 year, he looked carefully out of his bleary, drunken eyes 
 and chose a smaller objective before he charged. 
 
 Month after month Muztagh wended along through the 
 elephant trails, and now and then rooted up great trees just 
 to try his strength. Sometimes he went silently, and some- 
 times like an avalanche. He swam alone in the deep 
 holes, and sometimes shut his eyes and stood on the bottom, 
 just keeping the end of his trunk out of the water. One day 
 he was obliged to kneel on the broad back of an alligator 
 who tried to bite off his foot. He drove the long body down 
 into the muddy bottom, and no living creature, except pos- 
 sibly the catfish that burrow in the mud, ever saw it again. 
 
218 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 He loved the rains that flashed through the jungles, the 
 swift-climbing dawns in the east, the strange, tense, breath- 
 less nights. And at midnight he loved to trumpet to the 
 herd on some far-away hill, and hear, fainter than the death 
 cry of a beetle, its answer come back to him. At twenty- 
 five he had reached full maturity; and no more magnificent 
 specimen of the elephant could be found in all of British 
 India. At last he had begun to learn his strength. 
 
 Of course he had known for years his mastery over the 
 inanimate things of the world. He knew how easy it was to 
 tear a tree from its roots, to jerk a great tree limb from 
 its socket. He knew that under most conditions he had 
 nothing to fear from the great tigers, although a fight 
 with a tiger is a painful thing and well to avoid. But he 
 did not know that he had developed a craft and skill that 
 would avail him in battle against the greatest of his own kind. 
 He made the discovery one sunlit day beside the Manipur 
 River. 
 
 He was in the mud bath, grunting and bubbling with 
 content. It was a bath with just room enough for one. 
 And seeing that he was young, and perhaps failing to meas- 
 ure his size, obscured as it was in the mud, a great "rogue" 
 bull came out of the jungles to take the bath for himself. 
 
 He was a huge creature, wrinkled and yellow-tusked and 
 scarred from the wounds of a thousand fights. His little 
 red eyes looked out malignantly, and he grunted all the 
 insults the elephant tongue can compass to the youngster 
 that lolled in the bath. He confidently expected that Muz- 
 tagh would yield at once, because as a rule young twenty- 
 five-year-olds do not care to mix in battle with the scarred 
 and crafty veterans of sixty years. But he did not know 
 Muztagh. 
 
The Elephant Remembers 219 
 
 The latter had been enjoying the bath to the limit, and 
 he had no desire whatever to give it up. Something hot 
 and raging seemed to explode in his brain and it was 
 as if a red glare, such as sometimes comes in the sunset, 
 had fallen over all the stretch of river and jungle before 
 his eyes. He squealed once, reared up with one lunge out 
 of the bath — and charged. They met with a shock. 
 
 Of all the expressions of power in the animal world, 
 the elephant fight is the most terrible to see. It is as if 
 two mountains rose up from their roots of strata and went 
 to war. It is terrible to hear, too. The jungle had been 
 still before. The river glided softly, the wind was dead, 
 the mid-afternoon silence was over the thickets. 
 
 The jungle people were asleep. A thunder storm would 
 not have broken more quickly, or could not have created a 
 wilder pandemonium. The jungle seemed to shiver with 
 the sound. 
 
 They squealed and bellowed and trumpeted and grunted 
 and charged. Their tusks clicked like the noise of a giant's 
 game of billiards. The thickets cracked and broke beneath 
 their great feet. 
 
 It lasted only a moment. It was so easy, after all. In 
 a very few seconds indeed, the old rogue became aware 
 that he had made a very dangerous and disagreeable mis- 
 take. There were better mud baths on the river, anyway. 
 
 He had not been able to land a single blow. And his 
 wrath gave way to startled amazement when Muztagh sent 
 home his third. The rogue did not wait for the fourth. 
 
 Muztagh chased him into the thickets. But he was too 
 proud to chase a beaten elephant for long. He halted, 
 trumpeting, and swung back to his mud bath. 
 
 But he did not enter the mud again. All at once he 
 
220 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 remembered the herd and the fights of his calfhood. All 
 at once he knew that his craft and strength and power were 
 beyond that of any elephant in all the jungle. Who was 
 the great, arrogant herd leader to stand against him ? What 
 yellow tusks were to meet his and come away unbroken? 
 
 His little eyes grew ever more red as he stood rocking 
 back and forth, his trunk lifted to catch the sounds and 
 smells of the distant jungle. Why should he abide alone, 
 when he could be the ruler of the herd and the jungle king? 
 Then he grunted softly and started away down the river. 
 Far away, beyond the mountains and rivers and the villages 
 of the hillfolk, the herd of his youth roamed in joyous 
 freedom. He would find them and assert his mastery. 
 
 The night fire of a little band of elephant catchers 
 burned fitfully at the edge of the jungle. They were silent 
 men — for they had lived long on the elephant trails — and 
 curiously scarred and somber. They smoked their cheroots, 
 and waited for Ahmad Din to speak. 
 
 "You have all heard?" he asked at last. 
 
 All but one of them nodded. Of course this did not 
 count the most despised one of them all — old Langur Dass 
 — who sat at the very edge of the shadow. His long hair 
 was gray, and his youth had gone where the sun goes at 
 evening. They scarcely addressed a word to him, or he to 
 them. True, he knew the elephants, but was he not pos- 
 sessed of evil spirits? He was always without rupees, 
 too, a creature of the wild that could not seem to under- 
 stand the gathering of money. As a man, according to the 
 standards of men, he was an abject failure. 
 
The Elephant Remembers 221 
 
 "Khusru has failed to catch White-Skin, but he has lived 
 to tell many lies about it. He comes to-night." 
 
 It was noticeable that Langur Dass, at the edge of the 
 circle, pricked up his ears. 
 
 "Do you mean the white elephant of which the Manipur 
 people tell so many lies?" he asked. "Do you, skilled 
 catchers that you are, believe that such an elephant is still 
 wild in the jungle?" 
 
 Ahmad Din scowled. "The Manipur people tell of him, 
 but for once they tell the truth," was the reply. "He is the 
 greatest elephant, the richest prize, in all of Burma. Too 
 many people have seen him to doubt. I add my word to 
 theirs, thou son of immorality!" 
 
 Ahmad Din hesitated a moment before he continued. Per- 
 haps it was a mistake to tell of the great, light-colored ele- 
 phant until this man should have gone away. But what 
 harm could this wanderer do them? All men knew that 
 the jungle had maddened him. 
 
 Langur Dass's face lit suddenly. "Then it could be 
 none but Muztagh, escaped from Dugan Sahib fifteen years 
 ago. That calf was also white. He was also overgrown 
 for his years." 
 
 One of the trackers suddenly gasped. "Then that is 
 why he spared Khusru!" he cried. "He remembered men." 
 
 The others nodded gravely. "They never forget," said 
 Langur Dass. 
 
 "You will be silent while I speak," Ahmad Din went on. 
 Langur grew silent as commanded, but his thoughts were 
 flowing backward twenty years, to days at the elephant lines 
 in distant hills. Muztagh was the one living creature that 
 in all his days had loved Langur Dass. The man shut his 
 eyes, and his limbs seemed to relax as if he had lost all 
 
222 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 interest in the talk. The evil one took hold of him at such 
 times, the people said, and his thoughts fled back into the 
 purple hills and the far-off spaces of the jungle. But to- 
 night he was only pretending. He meant to hear every 
 word of the talk before he left the circle. 
 
 "He tells a mad story, as you know, of the elephant 
 sparing him when he was beneath his feet," Ahmad Din 
 went on; "that part of his story does not matter to us. 
 Hail He might have been frightened enough to say that 
 the sun set at noon. But what matters to us more is that 
 he knows where the herd is — but a day's journey beyond the 
 river. And there is no time to be lost." 
 
 His fellows nodded in agreement. 
 
 "So to-morrow we will break camp. There can be no 
 mistake this time. There must be no points overlooked. The 
 chase will cost much, but it will return a hundred-fold. 
 Khusru says that at last the white one has started back to- 
 ward his herd, so that all can be taken in the same keddah. 
 And the white sahib that holds the license is not to know 
 that White-Coat i9 in the herd at all." 
 
 The circle nodded again, and contracted toward the 
 speaker. 
 
 "We will hire beaters and drivers, the best that can be 
 found. To-morrow we will take the elephants and go." 
 
 Langur Dass pretended to waken. "I have gone hungry 
 many days," he said. "If the drive is on, perhaps you 
 will give your servant a place among the beaters." 
 
 The circle turned and stared at him. It was one of 
 the stories of Langur Dass that he never partook in the 
 elephant hunts. Evidently poor living had broken his reso- 
 lutions. 
 
 "You shall have your wish, if you know how to keep a 
 
The Elephant Remembers 223 
 
 closed mouth," Ahmad Din replied. "There are other hunt- 
 ing parties in the hills." 
 
 Langur nodded. He was very adept indeed at keeping 
 a closed mouth. It is one of the first lessons of the jungle. 
 
 For another long hour they sat and perfected their plans. 
 Then they lay down by the fire together, and sleep dropped 
 over them one by one. At last Langur sat by the fire alone. 
 
 "You will watch the flame to-night," Ahmad Din ordered. 
 "We did not feed you to-night for pity on your gray hairs. 
 And remember — a gipsy died in a tiger's claws on this very 
 slope — not six months past." 
 
 Langur Dass was left alone with his thoughts. Soon he 
 got up, and stole out into the velvet darkness. The mists 
 were over the hills as always. 
 
 "Have I followed the tales of your greatness all these 
 years for this?" he muttered. "It is right for pigs with 
 the hearts of pigs to break their backs in labor. But you, 
 my Muztagh ! Jewel among elephants ! King of the jungle ! 
 Thou art of the true breed! Moreover, I am minded that 
 thy heart and mine are one! 
 
 "Thou art born ten thousand years after thy time, Muz- 
 tagh," he went on. "Thou art of the breed of masters, 
 not of slaves ! We are of the same womb, thou and I. Can 
 I not understand? These are not my people — these brown 
 men about the fire. I have not thy strength, Muztagh, 
 or I would be out there with thee! Yet is not the saying 
 that brother shall serve brother?" 
 
 He turned slowly back to the circle of the firelight. Then 
 his brown, scrawny fingers clenched. 
 
 "Am I to desert my brother in his hour of need? Am I 
 to see these brown pigs put chains around him, in the mo- 
 ment of his power? A king, falling to the place of a slave? 
 
224 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 Muztagh, we will see what can be done! Muztagh, my 
 king, my pearl, my pink baby, for whom I dug grass in 
 the long ago! Thy Langur Dass is old, and his whole 
 strength is not that of thy trunk, and men look at him as a 
 worm in the grass. But hail perhaps thou wilt find him an 
 ally not to be despised!" 
 
 VI 
 
 The night had just fallen, moist and heavy over the jungle, 
 when Muztagh caught up with his herd. He found them 
 in an open grassy glade, encircled by hills, and they were 
 all waiting, silent, as he sped down the hills toward them. 
 They had heard him coming a long way. He was not 
 attempting silence. The jungle people had got out of his 
 way. 
 
 The old bull that led the herd, seventy years of age and 
 at the pride of his wisdom and strength, scarred, yellow- 
 tusked and noble past any elephant patriarch in the jungle, 
 curled up his trunk when he saw him come. He knew very 
 well what would happen. And because no one knows better 
 than the jungle people what a good thing it is to take the 
 offensive in all battles, and because it was fitting his place 
 and dignity, he uttered the challenge himself. 
 
 The silence dropped as something from the sky. The little 
 pink calves who had never seen the herd grow still in this 
 same way before felt the dawn of the storm that they 
 could not understand, and took shelter beneath their mothers' 
 bellies. But they did not squeal. The silence was too deep 
 for them to dare to break. 
 
 It is always an epoch in the life of the herd when a young 
 bull contests for leadership. It is a much more serious 
 thing than in the herds of deer and buffalo. The latter 
 
The Elephant Remembers 225 
 
 only live a handful of years, then grow weak and die. A 
 great bull who has attained strength and wisdom enough to 
 obtain the leadership of an elephant herd may often keep 
 it for forty years. Kings do not rise and fall half so often 
 as in the kingdoms of Europe. For, as most men know, an 
 elephant is not really old until he has seen a hundred sum* 
 mers come and go. Then he will linger fifty years more, 
 wise and gray and wrinkled and strange and full of mem- 
 ories of a time no man can possibly remember. 
 
 Long years had passed since the leader's place had been 
 questioned. The aristocracy of strength is drawn on -quite 
 inflexible lines. It would have been simply absurd for an 
 elephant of the Dwasila or Mierga grades to covet the lead- 
 ership. They had grown old without making the attempt. 
 Only the great Kumiria, the grand dukes in the aristocracy, 
 had ever made the trial at all. And besides, the bull was a 
 better fighter after thirty years of leadership than on the 
 day he had gained the honor. 
 
 The herd stood like heroic figures in stone for a long mo- 
 ment, — until Muztagh had replied to the challenge. He 
 was so surprised that he couldn't make any sound at all at 
 first. He had expected to do the challenging himself. The 
 fact that the leader had done it shook his self-confidence 
 to some slight degree. Evidently the older leader still felt 
 able to handle any young and arrogant bulls that desired 
 his place. 
 
 Then the herd began to shift. The cows drew back with 
 their calves, the bulls surged forward, and slowly they made 
 a hollow ring, not greatly different from the pugilistic 
 ring known to fight-fans. The calves began to squeal, but 
 their mothers silenced them. Very slowly and grandly, with 
 infinite dignity, Muztagh stamped into the circle. His 
 
226 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 tusks gleamed. His eyes glowed red. And those appraising 
 old bulls in the ring knew that such an elephant had not 
 been born since the time of their grandfathers. 
 
 They looked him over from tail to trunk. They marked 
 the symmetrical form, the legs like mighty pillars, the sloping 
 back, the wide-apart, intelligent eyes. His shoulders were 
 an expression of latent might, — pow r er to break a tree-trunk 
 at its base; by the conformity of his muscles he was agile 
 and quick as a tiger. And knowing these things, and rec- 
 ognizing them, and honoring them, devotees of strength 
 that they were, they threw their trunks in the air till they 
 touched their foreheads and blared their full-voiced salute. 
 
 They gave it the same instant, as musicians strike the same 
 note at their leader's signal. It was a perfect explosion 
 of sound, a terrible blare, that crashed out through the 
 jungles and wakened every sleeping thing. The dew fell 
 from the trees. A great tawny tiger, lingering in hope 
 of an elephant calf, slipped silently away. The sound 
 rang true and loud to the surrounding hills and echoed and 
 reechoed softer and softer, until it was just a tiny tremor 
 in the air. 
 
 Not only the jungle folk marveled at the sound. At an 
 encampment three miles distant Ahmad Din and his men 
 heard the wild call and looked with wondering eyes upon 
 each other. Then out of the silence spoke Langur Dass. 
 
 "My lord Muztagh has come back to his herd — that is 
 his salute," he said. 
 
 Ahmad Din looked darkly about the circle. "And how 
 long shall he stay?" he asked. 
 
 The trap was almost ready. The hour to strike had 
 almost come. 
 
 Meanwhile the grand old leader stamped into the circle, 
 
The Elephant Remembers 227 
 
 seeming unconscious of the eyes upon him, battle-scarred 
 and old. Even if this fight were his last, he meant to pre- 
 serve his dignity. 
 
 Again the salute sounded, shattering out like a thunder- 
 clap over the jungle. Then challenger and challenged closed. 
 
 At first the watchers were silent. Then as the battle 
 grew ever fiercer and more terrible, they began to grunt and 
 squeal, surging back and forth, stamping the earth and 
 crashing the underbrush. All the jungle folk for miles 
 about knew what was occurring. And Ahmad Din wished 
 his keddah were completed, for never could there be a better 
 opportunity to surround the herd than at the present moment, 
 when they had forgotten all things except the battling mon- 
 sters in the center of the ring. 
 
 The two bulls were quite evenly matched. The patriarch 
 knew more of fighting, had learned more wiles, but he had 
 neither the strength nor the agility of Muztagh. The late 
 twilight deepened into the intense dark, and the stars of 
 midnight rose above the eastern hills. 
 
 All at once, Muztagh went to his knees. But as might 
 a tiger, he sprang aside in time to avoid a terrible tusk blow 
 to his shoulder. And his counter-blow, a lashing cut with 
 the head, shattered the great leader to the earth. The ele- 
 phants bounded forward, but the old leader had a trick 
 left in his trunk. As Muztagh bore down upon him he 
 reared up beneath, and almost turned the tables. Only the 
 youngster's superior strength saved him from immediate de- 
 feat. 
 
 But as the night drew to morning, the bulls began to see 
 that the tide of the battle had turned. Youth was con- 
 quering, — too mighty and agile to resist. The rushes of 
 the patriarch were ever weaker. He still could inflict pun- 
 
228 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 ishment, and the hides of both of them were terrible to see, 
 but he was no longer able to take advantage of his open- 
 ings. Then Muztagh did a thing that reassured the old 
 bulls as to his craft and wisdom. Just as a pugilist will 
 invite a blow to draw his opponent within range, Muz- 
 tagh pretended to leave his great shoulder exposed. The 
 old bull failed to see the plot. He bore down, and Muztagh 
 was ready with flashing tusk. 
 
 What happened thereafter occurred too quickly for the 
 eyes of the elephants to follow. They saw the great bull 
 go down and Muztagh stand lunging above him. And 
 the battle was over. 
 
 The great leader, seriously hurt, backed away into the 
 shadowed jungle. His trunk was lowered in token of de- 
 feat. Then the ring was empty except for a great red- 
 eyed elephant, whose hide was no longer white, standing 
 blaring his triumph to the stars. 
 
 Three times the elephant salute crashed out into the jungle 
 silence, — the full-voiced salaam to a new king. Muztagh 
 had come into his birthright. 
 
 VII 
 
 The keddah was built at last. It was a strong stockade, 
 opening with great wings spreading out one hundred yards, 
 and equipped with the great gate that lowered like a 
 portcullis at the funnel end of the wings. The herd had 
 been surrounded by the drivers and beaters, and slowly they 
 had been driven, for long days, toward the keddah mouth. 
 They had guns loaded with blank cartridges, and firebrands 
 ready to light. At a given signal they would close down 
 quickly about the herd, and stampede it into the yawning 
 mouth of the stockade. 
 
The Elephant Remembers 229 
 
 No detail had been overlooked. No expense had been 
 spared. The profit was assured in advance, not only from 
 the matchless Muztagh, but from the herd as well. The 
 king of the jungle, free now as the winds or the waters, 
 was about to go back to his chains. These had been such 
 days! He had led the herd through the hills, and had 
 known the rapture of living as never before. It had been 
 his work to clear the trail of all dangers for the herd. It 
 was his pride to find them the coolest watering-places, the 
 greenest hills. One night a tiger had tried to kill a calf 
 that had wandered from its mother's side. Muztagh lifted 
 his trunk high and charged down with great, driving strides, 
 — four tons and over of majestic wrath. The tiger leaped to 
 meet him, but the elephant was ready. He had met tigers 
 before. He avoided the terrible stroke of outstretched 
 claws, and his tusks lashed to one side as the tiger was in 
 midspring. Then he lunged out, and the great knees de- 
 scended slowly, as a hydraulic press descends on yellow 
 apples. And soon after that the kites were dropping out 
 of the sky for a feast. 
 
 His word was law in the herd. And slowly he began 
 to overcome the doubt that the great bulls had of him, — 
 doubt of his youth and experience. If he had had three 
 months more of leadership, their trust would have been ab- 
 solute. But in the meantime, the slow herding toward the 
 keddah had begun. 
 
 "We will need brave men to stand at the end of the 
 wings of the keddah" said Ahmad Din. He spoke no 
 less than truth. The man who stands at the end of the 
 wings, or wide-stretching gates, of the keddah is of course 
 in the greatest danger of being charged and killed. The 
 herd, mad with fright, is only slightly less afraid of the 
 
230 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 spreading wings of the stockade than of the yelling, whoop- 
 ing beaters behind. Often they will try to break through 
 the circle rather than enter the wings. 
 
 "For two rupees additional I will hold one of the wings," 
 replied old Langur Dass. Ahmad Din glanced at him, — at 
 his hard, bright eyes and determined face. Then he peered 
 hard and tried in vain to read the thoughts behind the eyes. 
 "You are a madman, Langur Dass," he said wonderingly. 
 "But thou shalt lie behind the right-wing men to pass them 
 torches. I have spoken." 
 
 "And the two extra rupees?" Langur asked cunningly. 
 
 "Maybe." One does not throw away rupees in Upper 
 Burma. 
 
 Within the hour the signal of "Mail, mail!" (Go on, 
 go on!) was given, and the final laps of the drive began. 
 
 The hills grew full of sound. The beaters sprang up 
 with firebrand and rifle, and closed swiftly about the herd. 
 The animals moved slowly at first. The time was not quite 
 ripe to throw them into a panic. Many times the herd would 
 leave their trail and start to dip into a valley or a creek- 
 bed, but always there was a new crowd of beaters to block 
 their path. But presently the beaters closed in on them. 
 Then the animals began a wild descent squarely toward the 
 mouth of the keddah. 
 
 "Hail" the wild men cried. "Oh, you forest pigs! On, 
 on! Block the way through that valley, you brainless sons 
 of jackals! Are you afraid? A if Stand close! Watch, 
 Puran! Guard your post, Khusru! Now on, on — do not 
 let them halt! Arret Aihai!" 
 
 Firebrands waved, rifles cracked, the wild shout of beat- 
 ers increased in volume. Then men closed in, driving 
 the beasts before them. 
 
The Elephant Remembers 231 
 
 But there was one man that did not raise his voice. 
 Through all the turmoil and pandemonium he crouched at 
 the end of the stockade wing, tense and silent and alone. 
 To one that could have looked into his eyes, it would have 
 seemed that his thoughts were far and far away. It was 
 just old Langur Dass, named for a monkey and despised 
 of men. 
 
 He was waiting for the instant that the herd would come 
 thundering down the hill, in order to pass lighted firebrands 
 to the bold men who held that corner. He was not certain 
 that he could do the thing he had set out to do. Perhaps 
 the herd would sweep past him, through the gates. If he did 
 win, he would have to face alone the screaming, infuriated 
 hillmen, whose knives were always ready to draw. But 
 knives did not matter now. Langur Dass had only his own 
 faith and his own creed, and no fear could make him be- 
 tray them. 
 
 Muztagh had lost control of his herd. At their head ran 
 the old leader that he had worsted. In their hour of fear 
 they had turned back to him. What did this youngster 
 know of elephant drives? Ever the waving firebrands drew 
 nearer, the beaters lessened their circle, the avenues of es- 
 cape became more narrow. The yawning arms of the stock- 
 ade stretched just beyond. 
 
 "Will I win, jungle gods?" a little gray man at the keddah 
 wing was whispering to the forests. "Will I save you, 
 great one that I knew in babyhood ? Will you go down into 
 chains before the night is done? All I hear the thunder 
 of your feet! The moment is almost here. And now — 
 your last chance, Muztagh !" 
 
 "Close down, close down!" Ahmad Din was shouting 
 
 . 
 
 
232 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 to his beaters. "The thing is done in another moment. 
 Hasten, pigs of the hills! Raise your voice ! Now! Aihcn!" 
 
 The herd was at the very wings of the stockade. They 
 had halted an instant, milling, and the beaters increased 
 their shouts. Only one of all the herd seemed to know the 
 danger — Muztagh himself — and he had dropped from the 
 front rank to the very rear. He stood with uplifted trunk, 
 facing the approaching rows of beaters. And there seemed 
 to be no break in the whole line. 
 
 The herd started to move on, into the wings of captivity ; 
 and they did not heed his warning squeals to turn. The 
 circle of fire drew nearer. Then his trunk seemed to droop, 
 and he turned, too. He could not break the line. He 
 turned too, toward the mouth of the keddah. 
 
 But even as he turned, a brown figure darted toward 
 him from the end of the wing. A voice known long ago 
 was calling to him, a voice that penetrated high and clear 
 above the babble of the beaters. "Muztagh!" it was crying. 
 "Muztagh!" 
 
 But it was not the words that turned Muztagh. An 
 elephant can not understand words, except a few elemental 
 sounds such as a horse or dog can learn. Rather it was 
 the smell of the man, remembered from long ago, and the 
 sound of his voice, never quite forgotten. For an elephant 
 never forgets. 
 
 "Muztagh ! Muztagh !" 
 
 The elephant knew him now. He remembered his one 
 friend among all the human beings that he knew in his 
 calf-hood; the one mortal from whom he had received love 
 and given love in exchange. 
 
 "More firebrands!" yelled the men who held that corner 
 of the wing. "Firebrands! Where is Langur Dass?" but 
 
The Elephant Remembers 233 
 
 instead of firebrands that would have frightened beast and 
 aided men, Langur Dass stepped out from behind a tree 
 and beat at the heads of the right-wing guards with a bamboo 
 cane that whistled and whacked and scattered them into 
 panic — yelling all the while — "Muztagh ! O my Muztagh ! 
 Here is an opening! Muztagh, come!" 
 
 And Muztagh did come — trumpeting — crashing like an 
 avalanche, with Langur Dass hard after him, afraid, now 
 that he had done the trick. And hot on the trail of Langur 
 Dass ran Ahmad Din, with his knife drawn, not meaning 
 to let that prize be lost to him at less than the cost of the 
 trickster's life. 
 
 But it was not written that the knife should ever enter 
 the flesh of Langur Dass. 
 
 The elephant never forgets, and Muztagh was monarch 
 of his breed. He turned back two paces, and struck with 
 his trunk. Ahmad Din was knocked aside as the wind 
 whips a straw. 
 
 For an instant elephant and man stood front to front. To 
 the left of them the gates of the stockade dropped shut 
 behind the herd. The elephant stood with trunk slightly 
 lifted, for the moment motionless. The long-haired man 
 who had saved him stood with upstretched arms. 
 
 It was such a scene as one might remember in an old 
 legend, wherein beasts and men were brothers, or such as 
 sometimes might steal, like something remembered from an- 
 other age, into a man's dreams. Nowhere but in India, 
 where men have a little knowledge of the mystery of the 
 elephant, could it have taken place at all. 
 
 For Langur Dass was speaking to my lord the elephant: 
 
 "Take me with thee, Muztagh! Monarch of the hills! 
 Thou and I are not of the world of men, but of the jungle 
 
234 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 and the rain, the silence, and the cold touch of rivers. We 
 are brothers, Muztagh. O beloved, wilt thou leave me 
 here to die!" 
 
 The elephant slowly turned his head and looked scorn- 
 fully at the group of beaters bearing down on Langur Dass, 
 murder shining no less from their knives than from their 
 lighted eyes. 
 
 "Take me," the old man pleaded; "thy herd is gone." 
 
 The elephant seemed to know what he was asking. He 
 had lifted him to his great shoulders many times, in the last 
 days of his captivity. And besides, his old love for Langur 
 Dass had never been forgotten. It all returned, full and 
 strong as ever. For an elephant never can forget. 
 
 It was not one of the man-herd that stood pleading be- 
 fore him. It was one of his own jungle people, just as, 
 deep in his heart, he had always known. So with one 
 motion light as air, he swung him gently to his shoulder. 
 
 The jungle, vast and mysterious and still, closed its gates 
 behind them. 
 
THE SERPENT CITY 
 
 It was curious that three such good woodsmen should wander 
 into the hills and fade from the earth. But as they were men 
 steeped in iniquity, no one mourned their loss. — From a Frontiers- 
 man's Diary. 
 
 There is one mystery in the Southern Oregon mountains 
 that never grows old, and never is understood. Even 
 ancient Abe Carver, who knew the strange ranges as never 
 geologist can hope to know them, who had melted snow in 
 his veins for blood, and strata in his frame for bones, found 
 it a fresh marvel at every fall of darkness. It is the 
 mystery of the mountain night. 
 
 It doesn't seem to be the same night that falls over cities 
 and plains. Even the stars look different. There is no 
 smoke to hide or blur them, and they seem to hang just at 
 the top points of the tall, dark pines. Once really to see 
 them, the people say, is to lose at once the worst of a 
 man's fears of that time-honored bogy, death. They give 
 a queer feeling of insignificance, too, that is remarkably good 
 for men. But they are just a small part of the mystery. 
 
 There are the smells, never to be forgotten. One of them 
 comes from the balsam, and is more wonderful than any 
 chemical perfume could possibly be, and gives more light, 
 far-flying dreams than is possible with opium. Some of 
 them come from the lakes that make a silver chain from 
 one end of the Back Country to the other, — and smell of wet 
 banks and Heaven alone knows what. Blending in the 
 mixture are such good and healthy smells as sun-baked earth, 
 
236 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 and fern beds, and tiny, shy mountain daisies that are almost 
 as hard to see as the little rock rabbits close to the snow line. 
 These are the smells that a man can perceive, but of 
 course a man has a ridiculously rudimentary sense of smell. 
 You can tell, by watching the night hunting of a wolf, 
 that he experiences a whole scale of smells on either side 
 of the little octave known to men. 
 
 Then there are the sounds that make a mystery just by 
 themselves. Of course, the human sense of hearing has 
 very limited and definite frontiers, but even for human 
 ears the mountains have enough unknown sounds to draw 
 a man's thoughts, as a sponge draws water, far into the 
 strange, little-used spaces of his mind, where he does not 
 like to have them go. Students who have sat in a col- 
 legiate class of psychology and have watched the tuning- 
 fork experiment are best able to understand these human 
 limits. As the note sounds higher and higher, fewer and 
 fewer students are able to hear it, until only one is left. 
 At the next note the one remaining cannot hear, either. But 
 it is perfectly evident that the forks are still making vibra- 
 tions, if the human ears were only tuned to hear them. 
 It is the same below the lowest note that a human ear can 
 perceive. And part of the mystery of the mountain night 
 is the ever-present impression that if one's ears were just 
 a little sharper, there would be a thousand sounds that 
 people have never dreamed of. But after all, perhaps these 
 limits are a good thing. As it is, men are having a hard 
 enough time clinging to their long-harbored theories of life 
 and death. 
 
 The limbs of the pines scratch and rub together with 
 a very curious sound. It is always right over your head, 
 and it dies away on each side of you. The wind tries to 
 
The Serpent City 237 
 
 force its way through the brush thicket, and its sound is like 
 a whimper of disappointment. There are a thousand sounds, 
 no two alike, that the wind can make. A few of the mil- 
 lion noises of the insect world are pitched in the right key 
 for human beings to hear, and always you are dimly aware 
 that some creature is stalking some other creature in the 
 shadows just beyond. The stalking wolf is one of the 
 most silent creatures in the world, but now and then he 
 cracks a twig, or crushes a leaf. And the darkness itself 
 is a mystery, particularly when the moon is shining through it. 
 
 It doesn't seem merely an absence of light. It seems 
 as if it were something in itself that drops down from the 
 mountain tops. It drops with startling speed, and it lifts 
 the same way. And through it, now and then, you can see 
 far-away forests that seem to have silver poured over them, 
 and curiously dark valleys, and strange, deep glens. The 
 whole region is strange beyond words, — with its endless 
 forests and its mysterious lakes and its stone heaps piled 
 without reason or sense, and its creeks that fade away when 
 you need them most, — but particularly it is strange at night. 
 People call it the Back Country because they don't know 
 any other name for it. It is back somewhere behind the 
 hills, and since deer and mines and things can be pro- 
 cured at the very edge of it, there is no sense in entering 
 it very far. As a result, the long-tailed jays still shriek 
 with astonishment and amazement every time one of the 
 curious forked creatures called men comes into their sight. 
 
 It isn't good to be lost in the Back Country. There are 
 no landmarks to guide one out. Streams are often very hard 
 to find, and the human body, not very good at best, soon 
 becomes tired of climbing a thousand ridges that look ex- 
 actly alike. Besides, the long, wild shriek of the moun- 
 
238 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 tain lion is apt to frighten a man into that deadly mistake 
 of running in a circle in the dark. Of course, the true- 
 breed mountain lion, weighing one hundred and fifty pounds 
 at the most, is the worst coward in the mountains, but his 
 kill-scream is very disconcerting and terrible. 
 
 The night had just dropped down about Abe Carver's 
 cabin; and the wonder that is a remembered echo of the 
 fear that men had in a younger world brought a curious 
 glow into his eyes. He was hardly conscious of it. He had 
 other things to think about to-night, for just that day a 
 very dear and ancient friend had wandered away into the 
 ridges, and the hills are always full of death traps for the 
 unsuspecting. They have always one trick more to play, 
 even when a mountaineer thinks he has learned them all. 
 
 People knew at the first glance at Abe Carver that in 
 some one great factor he differed from the common run of 
 mountain men. What the difference was they usually 
 couldn't say. He dressed just like the rest, mostly in buck- 
 skin, which wears like iron and does not require constant 
 cleaning. Then, his hair was strange and gray and long; 
 his arms and legs were hard and knotted; and his face 
 was scarred and deep-lined, like the faces of the mountains 
 themselves. But here all likeness abruptly stopped. 
 
 The mountain men never looked squarely into Carver's 
 eyes. They couldn't have told just why. They were 
 not afraid of him, — at least, they did not fear bodily 
 injury at his hands. He was neither particularly fast with 
 a pistol nor particularly strong. His eyes were rather large, 
 and they had a peculiar fixation. They were blue in color, 
 and they were always noticeably bright. The eyelids didn't 
 seem to close down as often as is natural. 
 
 Children have bright eyes, but this brightness of his 
 
The Serpent City 239 
 
 was not the kind that people love to see in the eyes of a 
 child. Strong drink can brighten a man's eyes, and there 
 are certain emotions, like fear and pleasure, that make 
 them sparkle. Carver's eyes had no such warm bright- 
 ness as is caused by these things. The light to be seen 
 under his brows was just as cold as the glitter that moun- 
 taineers behold on the face of the snow banks in the winter 
 sun. 
 
 Carver had lived too long in the mountains and had im- 
 bued too much of their spirit. He had stepped beyond the 
 pale ordained for human beings, and the mark of a strange, 
 outer world was beneath his lids. The gaunt wolves, 
 howling from the hilltops at night, have something of the 
 same glitter in their eyes. You can catch it sometimes in 
 the eyes of the little cowardly lynx that will mew on your 
 trail all day but never dares attack. And most of all it 
 is the property of the gliding people that live on the lowest 
 of the three planes that make up forest life. 
 
 If human beings had that look in a younger world, they 
 have mostly got away from it long since. There is no need 
 for it in farms and cities. It is an inheritance from a 
 wilder, more savage time, and now it remains the mark of 
 a wilder, more savage world that begins where the habita- 
 tions of men leave off. It is the mark of remorseless- 
 ness, inexorable as the cold in winter. It is the brand of 
 the kind of mercy one may expect from a wolf pack in 
 the snow, or the rattlesnake on the rock. The other brands 
 Carver had — a peculiar stealthy quality in his walk, and 
 a queer repressed note in his voice — were far too obscure 
 for any except the eyes of a naturalist. And no naturalist 
 would believe them if he saw them. 
 
 Abe Carver walked up and down in front of his cabin; 
 
240 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 and now and then he searched with his eyes the distant 
 hillsides. The dark was over them, but his eyes were 
 trained to see in the darkness. Sometimes he put his fingers 
 to his lips and gave a whistled call that seemed to re- 
 echo endlessly among the pines. 
 
 "Funny thing," he breathed. "All the time I've had him, 
 he hasn't been gone at feedin' time before." 
 
 The old man seemed very haggard and broken as he 
 began to prepare his simple meal. It had been years since 
 he had supped alone. Always the same faithful, loving 
 friend had been crouched at his feet. To-night he was 
 gone; and Abe was very lonely and apprehensive indeed. 
 
 There is a kind of fatalism in the creed of the mountains; 
 but it isn't the same kind that is to be found among such 
 old peoples as the Chinese or the Arabs. With the latter, 
 nothing seems to matter much one way or another; and 
 things matter very much indeed in the mountains. The 
 mountaineer is perfectly indifferent to the inevitability of 
 death; but what are half-felt emotions among the plains- 
 men are passions with him. He cannot forget an injury. 
 He may not know the meaning of pity; but he loves with 
 the devotion of a dog for his master. The farther one 
 goes into the Outer World of the Wild, the more simple 
 and intense emotions become. Abe Carver had only one 
 love, and he gave him all the affection of his heart. That 
 love was his shaggy hound, his companion in the hunt, his 
 partner in his explorations, the sharer of his troubles, his 
 defender and slave and friend. 
 
 Shag had trotted away on one of his endless hill journeys 
 at noon that day. He had taken the trail that went down 
 toward the Trotter place. Abe would rather have had 
 him go in any other direction. He did not like the Trotters, 
 
The Serpent City 241 
 
 new from a mountain district in the East. They were 
 grimy and vile-tongued and malignant; and he had once 
 had a dispute in court with them over a trap line. Always 
 before, Shag had returned, bounding like a wolf down the 
 slopes, when the sky first changed to green at sunset. It 
 was nearly nine now; and he had not yet come. 
 
 "We'll get you yet," the Trotters had told Carver at 
 the door of the court that day. " We'll bust you open like 
 a ripe papaw!" And then they had whispered oaths down 
 on his head, — such oaths as only men who know the sav- 
 age mountains can possibly conceive. 
 
 "But they wouldn't have shot my Shag," the old man mut- 
 tered into his coffee cup. "They couldn't have done a thing 
 like that." 
 
 But he was lying to himself, and he knew it. There 
 was nothing too low and mean for the Trotters. In this 
 way they differed from most of the mountain men, and 
 even the mountain creatures that range the forest. The 
 latter can be terrible and cruel, but they cannot be low. 
 It is against the laws of the wild. 
 
 The night drew on, hour after hour. Supper was done. 
 Carver built his fire high; and like a form in some curious 
 dark-colored stone, he stood waiting at the doorway. He 
 did not seem to move a hand or lift a shoulder. Men who 
 have waited on deer trails know that the most draining 
 conduct in the world is to remain perfectly motionless, 
 yet Abe had stood without motion for two long hours, 
 evidently without fatigue. 
 
 It isn't exactly a human quality, and it would have been 
 most disconcerting to watch. A lizard on a stone may 
 have that same impassive immobility; and it is particularly 
 a quality of the serpents. But even the larger forest beasts 
 
242 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 seem to lack the muscle control to do it easily. Carver 
 stood with his arms loose-hung, his strange, fixed eyes 
 gazing down the trail. 
 
 "It couldn't be that them Trotters have got him," he 
 said again. "If they have " 
 
 The words ended in a sort of throaty sob. For there 
 are certain emotions, as all men know, that cannot find 
 expression in words. The words for them have died from 
 the language in these gentler days. 
 
 Then his gray head lifted, almost imperceptibly. Far 
 away down the trail he could hear a sound that was not 
 part of the natural noises of the night. Above the sound 
 of the tree limbs, above the stir of the wind in the brush 
 thickets, he heard a faint, low whimper, almost like the 
 noise of the wind itself. And the next instant came an 
 echo of the old, familiar bark of welcome. But it was just 
 an echo, — the cry of a brave heart that remembers even 
 as it dies. 
 
 At once the motionless muscles of the man sprang to life. 
 He leaped down the trail; and a spectator would have 
 been curiously reminded of the lunge of a serpent. The 
 motion was so unbelievably fast, so silent. And in another 
 instant the dying dog was whimpering in his arms. 
 
 Its two hind legs were broken; the man could see where 
 the brave animal had dragged them in the dust of the moon- 
 lit trail. The hairy coat was matted and wet; and the 
 great, intelligent head was terribly battered and broken. 
 
 The dog did not shrink at the sight of the blue pistol 
 pointing squarely in the moonlight. It could see the eyes 
 that aimed along it, full of the same love it had always 
 seen. When the man's eyes had that look, they were never 
 to be feared. The pistol flame leaped in the dark. And then 
 
The Serpent City 243 
 
 the only sound on the mountain trail was the faint rustle 
 of leaves stirred by the quivering muscles of the dying 
 animal, and the loving, whispered curses of a weeping man. 
 It was a long time after this that he left the stiffen- 
 ing body and walked on down the trail. He went toward the 
 cabin on the lower level where the Trotters lived. He 
 went very softly, very smoothly, as if with no muscular 
 exertion. A snowshoe rabbit leaped and fled from his 
 trail. The little squeak of terror that it uttered was the 
 same that its breed had learned in long ages, at the sight 
 of a serpent descending from its ledges on its night-hunt- 
 ing. 
 
 There are three planes of life in the mountains, and the 
 laws are the same for each. The middle plane consists 
 of all those creatures whose byways are the game trails 
 in the brush and on the hills: the wolves that never are 
 full-fed, the larger bears, deer like streaks of brown light, 
 and the stately elk. The upper plane is the tree people and 
 the winged creatures. Here is the lynx that lies so close 
 to the great branches of the trees that he is all but invisible, 
 the gray squirrels, and such grotesque creatures as the porcu- 
 pine, — always the last hope of a wanderer lost and starving 
 in the mountains. And finally there is the under plane, 
 knowledge of which is still mostly a mystery except to the 
 greatest naturalists. 
 
 In this plane are the rodents, the marmots and rabbits 
 and mice and chipmunk, whose forests are the ferns. And 
 worse than any of these are the poison folk, the gray, 
 speckled rattlesnakes on the rocks. The casual hunter 
 in the hills does not see these poison people. In the first 
 place, most of them are nocturnal in their habits. Besides, 
 
244 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 they are perfectly camouflaged by nature to match the rocks 
 and dust in which they lie. Hunters very rarely go to 
 the rock ledges that they love, the breeding places where 
 sometimes a hundred of them will sun themselves on the 
 same cliff. And of all the creatures of the wild, theirs 
 is the most remorseless creed. 
 
 The wolf turns aside at the sound of their warning rattle. 
 The cattle forsake the slopes where they take their sun 
 baths. They have learned in long years to expect no mercy 
 from the poison folk, for the reptiles have a cold malig- 
 nancy toward all other living things, — perhaps because far 
 back in their evil minds they can remember when they 
 were the rulers and owners of the whole world, and they 
 are jealous of these intruders. They strike not only in 
 self-defense or in hunting, like most of the forest people. 
 Men who have been struck by a head that leaped like 
 a whip-lash from beneath a rock are well aware of this 
 fact, — if they survive to be aware of anything. The birds 
 hate them because when the glittering eyes meet their own, 
 all power to fly away passes from their wings. The little 
 mice and smaller rodents squeak with terror at just the 
 rustle of the leaves in the shadow. And even men, re- 
 membering from a remote time a great breed of serpents 
 that hunted in the darkness just without their caves, hate 
 and fear them too. 
 
 They do not understand them. They never quite under- 
 stood the miracle of their changing skins, their long fasts 
 from food and drink, thdir motionless slumber on the 
 rocks. Men know that the bite from a full-grown rattler 
 is often a very quick and unhappy death; for the venom 
 itself, a certain complex combination of proteids, is almost 
 
The Serpent City 245 
 
 as deadly a substance as the wisest chemist can evolve in 
 a laboratory. 
 
 The poison folk were Abe Carver's life and study. He 
 had not inherited the usual fear of them. Even in his boy- 
 hood he would leave his play to follow the gliding forms 
 through the grass. Their eyes, their habits, their strange, 
 malignant lives, had been a fascination to him in all his 
 long years. And he knew things about them that no living 
 man ever knew before. 
 
 His first study was the blue-racers, and the garter and 
 gopher snakes, and such snakes as kill their food by constric- 
 tion of their coiling bodies. They could exert a most re- 
 markable pressure, as the little Abe learned after many 
 experiments; but compared to the rattlers they were dull 
 and stupid things. He had watched them do their strange 
 dances in the moonlight; he had seen them attack a great 
 toad that had been frozen in its tracks with horror. Later 
 he beheld the same mystery in the rattlers. 
 
 Then one day Abe had followed a great rattler from 
 the river bank far up precipitous trails to a wonderful 
 serpent colony on the rocks. A man may live years in the 
 hills and never find one of these places; but once he does, 
 he remembers it to the day he dies. And he will go many 
 paces out of his way to avoid the place again. 
 
 The serpent cities are great fragments of broken ledge 
 where the rattlesnakes gather in countless hundreds. No 
 man knows what their business is. No man can imagine 
 what consultations the great gray king rattlers have among 
 themselves, what the females — no less deadly and twice as 
 malignant — say to one another, and why they lie for such 
 endless hours so still upon the rocks. 
 
 Sometimes they lie apart, and sometimes a number of 
 
246 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 them will make a ghastly mass like the twined locks of a 
 Medusa. Sometimes they stretch two and two, and often 
 the great males will battle to the death for a resting place 
 on a rock too small for both. All these things Abe Carver 
 had seen, and if any man in the world knew the why and 
 wherefore of them all, Abe Carver was he. 
 
 Abe had been bitten many times, but he had always 
 carried antidotes of the most scientific and effective kind. 
 And long ago he had become immune to rattler's venom. 
 He wore tall, tough boots — for a rattler's bite is painful 
 even when one is immune to its toxin — and he wore 
 long gloves over his wrists and hands. The gloves were 
 just as important as the boots, because in climbing over 
 the snake city a man could only make progress by using 
 both hands and feet. 
 
 At twenty-one he had a knowledge of rattlesnakes past 
 that of any naturalist of his period in the world. At forty 
 the poison folk that ever coil and glide and strike and 
 dance on the rocks were his cult and his life and his eternal 
 mystery. But at sixty he had passed all this. He had 
 lived too long in the under plane. In a measure they had 
 become his own people. They did not mystify him now. 
 Except for a dog that whined and cowered at the extreme 
 frontier of the snake city, they were the one remaining in- 
 terest in his life. 
 
 At sixty Abe Carver had broken one of the few great 
 underlying laws of the universe. He had probed too deeply 
 into a mystery that had not been meant for human beings 
 to know. It has been the same since the beginning of the 
 world. There have been men who have looked too far 
 into the occult sciences of the East, — and their story is a 
 good one to forget. There is a more recent story of a 
 
The Serpent City 247 
 
 man who purposely went to prison to study the ways of 
 criminals and came out a criminal himself. Abe Carver 
 had lain for too many long sunlit hours watching the cease- 
 less coiling of the poison folk. He had gazed too long 
 into their glittering eyes. There had been a time when 
 he wondered at himself, at the strange pleasure he took 
 in the touch of their cold bodies; but that was past. He 
 had once started with amazement at the sight of his own 
 bright eyes in a looking-glass; but long ago he had be- 
 come accustomed to their glitter. And once another moun- 
 taineer had shuddered and sworn that Carver moved 
 through the hills like a snake itself; but Abe had forgotten 
 that his reply had only been a laugh. These were just 
 externals, simply unconscious imitation. But too many 
 times he had watched the night hunting of the snakes, had 
 seen their cold rage in battles; their own remorselessness 
 had grown into his blood and fiber. 
 
 They feared him no more. He had learned to imitate 
 a little whispered call — more like a hiss than a word — by 
 which they knew their friends; a sound that long ago he 
 had learned was the snakes' peace greeting. He could whis- 
 per it softly at the first stir of a gray ribbon beneath a 
 rock, and it meant that he could pass back and forth un- 
 challenged. 
 
 Just once as Carver walked down the moonlit trail to 
 the Trotters' house, he had to utter the call. Just as 
 he had come down into the lower hills, a gray shadow had 
 streaked across his path. And for the first time since he 
 had left his dead companion on the trail, he paused tensely. 
 
 His eyes probed into the darkness where the snake had 
 vanished. It had been but a gopher snake, after all; but 
 it had started a queer current of thought in his mind. What 
 
248 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 had he meant to do by this blind advance? The Trotters 
 were three, all of them dead shots and in the prime of their 
 strength; and he was only one. Does a wolf attack when 
 he has odds of three against him ? 
 
 He had come up blindly from the trail, his heart full 
 of such cold hatred as most men have long ago lost the 
 power to feel. Hatred must have exercise as well as any 
 other emotion, or it dries up like the poison duct of a 
 snake of fifty winters, — and too many years of peace have 
 killed the power of most human beings to feel it. But 
 Carver had had good teachers. 
 
 Even at first it had not been the kind of hatred that 
 ignites the brain and heart and makes a man helpless be- 
 fore his foes. Thoughts must be allowed free play; brains 
 must be kept clear; this is one of the first laws of the 
 wilderness. Yet he had not stopped to plan. He was 
 dimly cognizant of some wild and daring impulse to attack 
 all three of the Trotters as they sat in their cottage; of 
 slaying them as a wolf slays sheep. Yet in a single moment 
 of clear thinking he knew that his one hope lay in strategy 
 alone. 
 
 He might kill one of them ; but surely the deadly aim of 
 one of the other two would end his own life. One was not 
 enough. Besides, the preservation of one's life is the 
 first law of the forest, and no plan must be considered 
 that entailed its loss. 
 
 Abe walked softly, stealthily down into the first clear- 
 ings. Once a horse neighed wildly and fled in unlooked- 
 for terror, and once a toad, usually so dull and stolid, 
 hopped frantically into the darkness. In a little while he 
 saw the windows of the Trotter cottage. 
 
 The men had not yet gone to bed; but the fact did 
 
The Serpent City 249 
 
 not surprise Carver. Of course they had been looking for 
 Abe to attempt some stroke of vengeance; and they had 
 no intention of being found asleep. Abe felt a little shiver 
 of gladness, something like the first rapture of passion; 
 for the more tired they were in the next day's business, the 
 longer were the odds against them. He stole up to the 
 window. 
 
 The three of them were sitting in their filthy room; and 
 drowsiness had begun to dull the savagery of their faces. 
 All evening through they had waited for Abe to come; and 
 now that he was here, they did not know it. They were 
 three great, dark men, foul of tongue and evil of face. 
 
 "We might as well go to bed," the oldest Trotter was 
 saying. "The skunk ain't comin'." 
 
 The second brother stood up and stretched out his arms. 
 "He ain't got the nerve. Whatever made you think he 
 had? He's crazy, anyway — you can see it in his eyes." 
 
 "I don't like them eyes," the youngest of the three ob- 
 jected. And he ought to have known, for they were fast 
 upon him as he spoke. 
 
 The others laughed. "He's a bluff — and what could he 
 do against the three of us? We'd shoot him like a rat be- 
 fore he got his guns out. But one of us had 'better keep 
 watch. We'll take turns at it — two hours each." 
 
 "Maybe his dog died on the trail, and he hasn't seen him 
 yet," the youngest of the three went on. "We'd hate to 
 have to carry him up and throw him in old Abe's bed." 
 
 The three of them laughed, — a grim, terrible sound that 
 rocked out into the quiet night. The old man's lower teeth 
 gnawed at his lip. He was shaking all over now, yet not 
 enough to stir the dead leaves under his feet. It was not 
 nervousness, except in the sense that all wild creatures are 
 
250 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 nervous at the beginning of a hunt. It was hatred that 
 seemed to shiver his heart to pieces. 
 
 "I tried to leave enough life in him to get home," the 
 older brother answered. And they chortled again. Then 
 they lay down in their clothes to sleep. 
 
 They did not dream of the two remorseless eyes that 
 glittered through the windowpane. And then, as a shadow 
 goes, the old man glided away. He went into the deepest 
 brush; and the lessons of silence he had learned on the 
 rock ledges laid his feet like cushions against the dry twigs. 
 Then his lids slowly closed over his fixed eyes, and he went 
 to sleep. 
 
 There was work to do on the morrow; and work to be 
 done well needs fresh muscles and clear thought such as 
 only sleep can give. Fifty feet to his right a wolf slept 
 through the early night hours, waiting for the hunting 
 time in the dawn. One hundred to his left a rattlesnake 
 curled about a rock still warm from the previous day's sun ; 
 and it was deep in its slumber. And to one that looked down 
 from the clouds, the three would have seemed of the same 
 breed. 
 
 The long, silent wait in the brush would have been a 
 physical drain on some men, but Abe knew just how to 
 lie relaxed and conserve his strength. The night drew to 
 morning — a dawn that leaped up over the mountains wherein 
 the trees sprang out of the shadow one by one and grew 
 clear-lined — and the morning drew till noon. The vigilance 
 of the Trotters had grown ever less as the morning hours 
 went by. When they came in to dinner at noon, they had 
 decided that Carver would attempt no vengeance at all. 
 
 They did not know that even a toothless wolf will fight 
 to the death, and that a rattlesnake will strike after its 
 
The Serpent City 251 
 
 poison glands are dried up with age. If they had known 
 these things, they might have been more watchful when they 
 went out to their work in the afternoon. 
 
 They did not see Abe creep into the house. If he had 
 glided in the dust like his poison people, he could have 
 scarcely been less visible. Even the buzzard that keeps 
 grim watch over all the mountains did not see him. 
 
 The house was quite deserted. It was full of the odors 
 of uncleanliness, — a quality very hard to endure by one 
 accustomed to the clean smells of the woods. And there 
 were hardly enough articles of value in the house for his 
 decoy. It didn't much matter, however. The sight of 
 him leaving the cabin with a full sack would be enough to 
 put them on his trail. 
 
 He emptied the potatoes from a burlap sack, then filled 
 the bag with such things as he thought the Trotters valued 
 most. Then he put in a light comforter to give the bag 
 an appearance of weight and bulk. 
 
 But he was not through yet. The Trotters carried their 
 pistols, but their rifles were hung on the deer horns over the 
 little fireplace. A well-aimed rifle bullet might end the 
 adventure before it had begun; and his next business was 
 to spike the guns beyond repair. It was not hard to do, 
 with a hammer and a brick from the fireplace. 
 
 He did not work in silence now. A little noise was bet- 
 ter. If the Trotters heard and came, their dog would 
 surely reach him before they did. And he did not wish too 
 long a start on them. He merely wanted to remain just 
 out of pistol range. And now only one gun remained un- 
 broken. 
 
 He was still cold as steel; and the only change in him 
 was an added brilliancy in his reptile eyes. But a mad- 
 
252 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 ness was creeping through his blood like a poison. His face 
 was curiously white; and his motions, ever quickened, be- 
 came more lithe and sinuous. His age had fallen from his 
 shoulders in a breath. With a clang and clash he struck 
 the fireplace wall with the last of the three rifles and the 
 lock shattered to pieces. 
 
 Far away, through the windows, he saw the three Trot- 
 ters stop in their work. It was just as he had hoped. He 
 shouted at them, a scream of fury, and crouched to wait 
 the onslaught of the dog. It was bounding across the fields 
 toward the cabin; and in a moment more it would spring 
 into the open door. 
 
 The two met in the doorway ; and a knife flashed down in 
 a white light. Then, laughing his scorn, and in plain sight 
 of the three men that watched from their fields, he kicked 
 the bleeding body from his path. 
 
 With his bag over his shoulder, he started running toward 
 the hills. One of the Trotters' herd of long-horned cattle 
 lifted its head from the grass as he passed, and he fired 
 remorselessly at its shoulders. It rocked down with a bel- 
 low; and he halted to drive his blade into its neck. 
 
 The Trotters were firing now, impotently, with their 
 pistols. And Abe Carver cursed with mad rapture when 
 he saw them spring in pursuit of him. He did not need 
 the sack over his shoulder as a decoy. Once having seen 
 the butchery of the steer and dog, they would follow him 
 till they died. 
 
 Just as he had hoped, they soon swung into the long, easy 
 trot that is one of the few accomplishments men have learned 
 from the wild creatures. It is a pace that will run down 
 a horse in time; and they did not question for a moment 
 
The Serpent City 253 
 
 that overtaking Carver was but the work of an hour at 
 most. They were young and strong, and he was old. 
 
 The youngest of the three had gone to the cabin after 
 the rifles; now he had joined them with the story of a 
 fresh atrocity. And the three of them trotted together up 
 the long slope in pursuit of the gray figure just ahead. 
 
 They did not waste their pistol cartridges by firing at 
 Carver. A pistol is not particuly accurate at long distances, 
 and Carver hovered just out of range. They would catch 
 him soon, anyway. Besides, a murder at arm's-length would 
 better satiate their fury. 
 
 He led them over hills and down into still glens and 
 around the shoulders of mountains and along narrow trails. 
 He was trotting slowly now, and their pace had decreased too. 
 As danger from pistol fire grew less, he had permitted the dis- 
 tance to narrow between them. Ever he moved toward 
 the great waste of crag and rock heap that men called the 
 Dead Indian Mountains. And ever he drew his three pur- 
 suers after him. 
 
 Now he was traversing the great range itself. The 
 August sun blasted down in fury, and the rocks swam and 
 shimmered in the heat-waves. It was the most torrid hour 
 of the day, just as he had hoped. 
 
 The three came hot on the trail, for surely he was almost 
 exhausted now. The great rock heaps, piled as if in the play 
 of a mad god, looked down at this strange chase, and had 
 never seen the like before. 
 
 Now Carver was ready to descend. He knew the country 
 well. A thousand times he had crept down this same 
 precipice of shale, — a steep slope that ended on a white rock 
 ledge below. There was no retreat, once one started the 
 descent. Hand and knees and feet were needed to prevent 
 
254 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 a fatal fall, and only by the most tortuous climbing could 
 one ever leave the white ledge below. 
 
 He dipped down and down; uttering a little whispered 
 call that was more nearly like the hiss of a snake than a 
 human cry, — the friendship articulation of the poison people. 
 
 Literally hundreds of the lithe, spotted ribbons of gray 
 were sunning themselves on the rocks, as always in the 
 heat of the day. Some of them were in ghastly masses, and 
 some were stretched at full length. It was the great colony 
 of rattlesnakes that Abe Carver had known of old, the 
 great assembly of poison folk whose bite is death. 
 
 They could not see him now, but they heard his call. 
 The rattlers shed their skins in dog days; and during the 
 period they become temporarily blind. And that is the 
 time that all creatures most carefully avoid the snake trails 
 in the dust. At such times their malignancy is at its height, 
 and they strike without warning at the slightest movement 
 on the stone. 
 
 But they gave no heed to old Abe Carver. They were 
 used to him, and to their own whispered friendship call that 
 marked him as a brother rather than a foe. He climbed 
 slowly down, his face and hands and body almost brushing 
 hundreds of the terrible flat heads. Then he dropped his 
 bag and sped into the brush beneath. 
 
 And just as he had known, his three pursuers plunged 
 down after him. 
 
 The wild is very old and most imperturbable; and all 
 except its own soft voices are always quickly stilled. A gray 
 old man who had chattered and danced in rapture stretched 
 out in the sun to sleep. And almost as quickly as the ripples 
 die when three stones are cast into the sea, the silence fell 
 again over the serpent city. 
 
BROTHER BILL THE ELK 
 
 The bull elk bows his head only to the Manitou, the In- 
 dians say; and one has to look rather well, and quite long, 
 to see just what they mean. And there is really more in 
 it than appears at the first glance, — a story as old as the 
 hills. 
 
 Of course, in the beginning, it refers to the unquestioned 
 majesty of that great monarch of the deer. No camper or 
 forest ranger can ever catch a glimpse of him at the drink- 
 ing pool, or in the salt lick, or engaged in those furious 
 battles of the rutting season and fail to observe this attribute. 
 He is the great wapiti, and no royal stag in Scotland can 
 come up to him in weight, length of antler or power of 
 body. He isn't as large as the European elk — another name 
 for America's moose — but the latter itsn't a true stag, and 
 wapiti is. And his majesty does not depend on looks alone. 
 Kingliness, in the aristocracy of strength of the forest, is 
 mainly a matter of fighting, and the bull elk has in his 
 front feet two as swift and as deadly incentives to obedience 
 as any one would wish to feel. That gray old king, the 
 grizzly bear, could never in his best days be called a beauty; 
 but when one has seen him smash down a bull moose with 
 one blow, he inspired respect. 
 
 Now and again there have been cougars who have tried 
 to conquer a bull elk in a fair fight, but only the buzzards 
 benefited by the occasion. The lashing hoofs and slashing 
 antlers make a combination that a wise cougar will punc- 
 
256 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 tiliously avoid. The only way one of the great cats could 
 hope to conquer is by springing from ambush ; and, of course, 
 an attack from the shadows may occur even to an all-power- 
 ful monarch. 
 
 Such things as coyotes and any lone wolves as can be 
 met in the first three seasons of the year stay out of the bull 
 elk's path. This alone is enough to establish his degree. 
 They don't like his hoofs and most of all, they don't care 
 for the uppercut of the bayonet-pointed antlers. 
 
 But this is only half the story. Granting that the bull 
 elk is the forest monarch, many days of wonder and many 
 nights beneath the stars must be spent before the full truth 
 of the Indian saying can be understood. Perhaps it can't 
 be learned at all in spring, when the birds mate two by two 
 and the flowers grow in the new grass; or in summer, when 
 the whole forest world dozes in the sun; and only a guess 
 at it may be made in the tingling, frosty dawns of fall. But 
 not even a tenderfoot can remain in doubt when finally the 
 winter breaks, — if indeed a man may be called a tenderfoot 
 who has endured the mountain winter. 
 
 In this season — in the terrible days of deepest snow — the 
 elk stag bows his head at last. And the meaning gleams 
 through the mystery: the crown falls — both his splendid 
 antlers drop from his head. Less imaginative but more 
 scientific people will tell you that the elk has shed his horns, 
 as always in last days of winter, but the Indian knows 
 better. It is obeisance at last, — not to any living creature 
 that might contest his place, but to the Indian god of all 
 things, Manitou himself. 
 
 Not Manitou in the flesh — such sights are kept only for 
 the wisest and oldest of medicine men — rather it is the 
 great wastes of snow with which Manitou yearly reminds 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 257 
 
 the forest people of his might. For one season alone, the 
 Indians say, all the forest creatures are reminded of the 
 Great Spirit, lest — like certain human monarchs^ — they be- 
 come too vain and proud. And the people prove it not only 
 by the dropping of the monarch's antlers, but by the way the 
 black bears hide their faces in the snow, and the mountain 
 lions slink to the lower foothills. 
 
 All things are humbled in the winter, and starvation and 
 cold and death are familiar spirits. If these do not suffice, 
 there remain the wolves, — harmless when living alone or 
 in pairs in the three previous seasons, but indomitable when 
 gathered into their winter packs. They are not just forest 
 hunters, simply living organisms to be repelled with hoof 
 and horn. In the winter they seem the very spirits of the 
 snow, of the unconquerable cold season. Even the bull elk, 
 monarch though he is, must flee from them — and his is the 
 story of the war they waged against him, jealous of his 
 power, in the land of sloughs and waterways in the far Cas- 
 cades. 
 
 Baby Bill opened his eyes for the first time one lovely 
 day in late spring. Of course he didn't know his name was 
 Baby Bill, and besides, he really didn't receive the name 
 until some months later. Like as not, the great bull elk 
 would go clear through life without exactly understanding 
 the full import of his title. He was born in a little glade 
 in the Oregon Cascades, in the very heart of that great for- 
 est belt from which cold Eastern people expect so much 
 in the way of lumber and fuel in years to come. The ma- 
 ternity bed was a little mattress of leaves and pine needles 
 quite hidden away, soft and springy as any hair mattress 
 made by men. 
 
258 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 In all probability, his first emotion was one of fear. Prob- 
 ably he experienced it before the pangs of hunger, and that 
 means he had to take it in with his first breath. There were 
 shadows lurking beneath the heavy foliage of the distant 
 thickets, and to any fawn born in the mountains, shadows 
 are always the abiding place of fear. "Wait till thy horns 
 are grown," perhaps the cow told him as his lips closed 
 at her udder, "and then thou needst not be so tremulous 
 of every shadow, and every cracking twig." For perhaps, 
 mother-like, the cow could already see in her mind's eye 
 the glory that was to be if her little bull calf could reach 
 maturity. For there is no prouder race of creatures in the 
 whole world than the elk, — vain of their beauty and strength 
 and antlers flowing back. 
 
 Baby Bill was very frightened; he had a whole range 
 of terrors, one for every hair along his spine, passed down 
 to him straight from the young days of the earth. He 
 nestled closer to his mother's warm body. No man may tell 
 what his keen nose read in the faint wind that came blow- 
 ing up the glen and pushing and whimpering through the 
 thickets. Of course, it was full and running over with the 
 multiple odors of the wild places, — smells wholly incompre- 
 hensible to man but which spoke volumes to the little calf. 
 Perhaps he knew about the great tawny cat that slept in 
 the covert a half-mile up-wind: a creature to be carefully 
 avoided if Baby Bill were ever to reach maturity. No 
 bull elk fears a cougar on an open trail, but the aggravating 
 thing about Whisperfoot is that the open trails are one 
 place where he does not go. His game is to lie in ambush, 
 so close to the yellow leaves that not even the eye of a wild 
 goose can detect him, and to leap with the speed of a ser- 
 pent's dart when the fawn passes on the trail. 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 259 
 
 Baby Bill, however, smelled very few of his own kind. 
 The elks, even fifteen years back, were no longer numerous 
 in the Oregon Cascades. Their teeth had been too val- 
 uable to wear as watch charms, and their heads made beau- 
 tiful trophies to hang above buffets. In fact, there was only 
 one small herd, numbering about fifteen, ranging the whole 
 section of the lake region. It had neither grown nor de- 
 creased in the preceding few years, the birth of the fawns 
 barely keeping pace with the mortalities from wild crea- 
 tures and rifles. At that moment, led by a magnificent stag 
 of seven-tined antlers, the little herd was dozing in the 
 spring sunlight a quarter-mile down-wind. 
 
 The doe looked at her baby with a mother's pride, noting 
 the beautiful coat, the intelligent, startled eyes, the long, 
 slender legs and the well-built body. Not often, in these 
 later days, had such perfect young been born. She licked 
 his burnished skin to cleanse it of its film of dust. 
 
 Scarcely was she done when Baby Bill experienced his 
 first real adventure. Graycoat, remembered of old, had 
 caught their smell in the wind; and he was always quite 
 interested in the young born in the mountains. There 
 are few more accomplished stalkers in the whole wilderness 
 world than Graycoat, and he was at his best, for his own 
 mate had a litter of hungry cubs in a lair in a distant glen, 
 and much fresh meat was needed to supply the strong milk 
 for their ever-changing tissue. The foliage was wet from 
 the spring rains and the twigs bent beneath his step without 
 noise. His only disadvantage lay in the fact that because 
 of the cow's foresight in choosing the maternity bed, he was 
 obliged to cross a little stretch of comparatively open hill- 
 side to reach the covert where the mother elk was hidden. 
 
 He came as a serpent comes, every motion stealing, every 
 
260 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 foot placed with infinite care. It would have been an ex- 
 ceedingly simple matter to have made one swift dash and 
 overtaken the cow and calf ; but for a very good reason, this 
 was farthest from Graycoat's mind: the cow's front feet, 
 the hoof of each being as deadly a weapon as a forest crea- 
 ture cares to encounter. Graycoat had no intention of 
 waging a pitched battle with an infuriated cow elk. Gray- 
 coat's plan was to steal up close and make a surprise attack 
 on the fawn before the cow could come to its defense. 
 
 At that instant, with a motion so fast the little calf did 
 not even have time to be frightened, the cow leaped to her 
 feet with a bleat of anger. She had seen Graycoat's steal- 
 ing shadow in the leaves. 
 
 It would have been curious to observe the startling econ- 
 omy of the elk's motions. Just before, she had been lying 
 supinely in the pine needles, rejoicing in her calf, and tremu- 
 lous with that mystery of motherhood which even the lower 
 creatures cannot escape. The next moment she stood fully 
 erect, with a strange rigidity about certain muscles in the 
 shoulders and the thighs, with eyes looking straight at her 
 foe, with head somewhat lowered, in a perfect position for 
 defense. Seemingly one motion alone had accomplished the 
 change. 
 
 For a second Graycoat crouched. It might be that the 
 cow, infuriated, would leap from the bed and attempt to 
 attack him, — a plan that would suit Graycoat to a nicety. 
 Then he could leap to one side and slash with white teeth 
 at the fawn's throat before the cow could arrest her charge 
 and whirl back to its defense. 
 
 Again Graycoat was to be disappointed. The cow stood 
 motionless, her muscles set for the attack. 
 
 Graycoat's lips drew back over his gleaming teeth, and 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 261 
 
 he snarled his disappointment. It is a fact that most of 
 the larger forest creatures receive their disappointments with 
 wretched spirit. There is no more distinctive sound in the 
 whole Western forest life than the yowl of a timber wolf 
 which has missed its stroke. He means it to be very ter- 
 rible, but to Woof's ears, at least, it is only funny, for 
 the black bear has notoriously the best sense of humor in 
 the forest. But Woof himself has been known to howl dole- 
 fully when a store of honey is beyond his reach. And now 
 Graycoat snarled his anger that the elk had seen his ap- 
 proach, and had leaped to her son's defense in time. 
 
 Graycoat made a slow circuit about the covert, growling 
 all the time. But the reddened eyes of the elk kept pace 
 with him, and the razor-edged hoofs were kept ready to 
 strike. Nothing remained for Graycoat but to snarl his 
 insults and depart. 
 
 Though they had no tongue in common, the elk mother 
 understood the full meaning of those snarls. "Not now," 
 they said. "I will not strike now. But in the winter when 
 the snows are deep, then will thy son know the fangs of 
 Graycoat! And so wilt thou and all thy kind, thou un- 
 gainly heifer!" 
 
 Graycoat was implying that the doe was not a wild crea- 
 ture at all, but just one of the human-driven cattle that the 
 wild creatures often encountered and which they held in 
 the most abject scorn. The doe snorted in answer ; but Gray- 
 coat's sharp eyes did not miss the little, nervous tremor that 
 flickered at her flanks. 
 
 Graycoat stole away; but he left the doe elk quivering 
 with fright, not just the nervous reaction from the crisis 
 of the moment before. She had been frightened then — 
 frightened for her calf with the same fear which is a 
 
262 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 companion, day and night, to any female deer — but now a 
 strange weight of dread had come besides. 
 
 The reason was that Graycoat had spoken the truth. 
 In winter, when the crown of antlers had fallen from the 
 head of the bull-leader of the herd, Graycoat would come 
 into his own. He was only to be scoffed at now, a killer 
 of rabbits, and a hunter of fledgling grouse. Of course the 
 little blacktail deer had to fear him, timid, ineffective crea- 
 tures that they were; but Woof the bear, possibly Whisper- 
 foot the cougar and any full-grown specimen of her own 
 herd could drive him from the trail. 
 
 In spring, summer and fall there was only one name for 
 Graycoat: coward. These three seasons would not last 
 forever. The leaves would die and fall, just as the antlers 
 fell from the bull elk, and the snows would deepen on the 
 plateaus. For Graycoat was a great, gaunt timber wolf; 
 and in the winter he and all his brethren would gather into 
 a pack; and not even the bull elk can avail against the wolf 
 pack in the snow. 
 
 Perhaps, decreed as it had been by the forest gods, there 
 was a symbolic significance in this wolf menace on the first 
 day of Baby Bill's life. It foretold a long life of war- 
 fare between the monarch of the forest and the terrors of the 
 snow, with the buzzard triumphing at last. 
 
 In the terms of the old language of venery, Baby Bill 
 was a hind-calf during his first season. After the first week 
 he was just as shy of danger, and almost as skilful in escap- 
 ing it, as was his mother. He didn't even leave his birth- 
 place. Unlike marty of the forest creatures, the fawn elk 
 is practically helpless during the first few days of its 
 life. But after a week had passed, his slender little legs 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 263 
 
 were strong enough to carry him anywhere his mother 
 chose to lead him. 
 
 The wilderness world unfolded its mysteries for him, 
 day by day. He quickly learned to interpret the wind's mes- 
 sages, smells and sounds so faint that no human senses could 
 possibly perceive them; and his instincts told him what to 
 do in each case. He learned how to steal through the heavy 
 thickets, more like a brown shadow than a living thing; 
 and when the necessity arose, he could lie so still and close 
 in the brush that the sharpest eye could not detect his out- 
 line. 
 
 Sometimes his mother followed the herd, but more often 
 she and her son kept to themselves. Before the last days 
 of August, life began to hold all manner of delights for him. 
 He liked the breathless dawns where his mother grazed on 
 the hillsides, the long, sleepy hours of midday, and the stir 
 and thrill of the descending night. He enjoyed the occasional 
 bath he and his mother had at the shores of the long sloughs 
 extending out from the lakes. 
 
 This was a land of sloughs. The range was a great sweep 
 of territory that circles Mount McLaughlin ; and every day's 
 journey took them to the shore of some new, shimmering 
 lake. Sometimes it was Lake of the Woods, nestling like a 
 great sapphire in a setting of evergreen ; sometimes they went 
 straight east, over the Cascades, to the shores of the Klamath 
 Lakes. There is no more mysterious body of water in the 
 whole West than the Upper Klamath Lake — said to be 
 the largest fresh-water body west of the Mississippi River 
 — but only on rare occasions would the little calf get a 
 glimpse of it. Most of the margin of this lake consists of 
 wide, brown stretches of tule and wocus marshes, a place 
 beloved by the water-fowl but where the heavy feet of elk 
 
264 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 may not pass. While in most places the grass roots and 
 a shallow covering of soil are substantial enough to support 
 a heavy foot, there are plenty of inoffensive-looking little 
 pools where death in its ugliest form is always waiting. The 
 water is only a few inches deep and the quagmire lies beneath. 
 Duck hunters have now and then tried to find a bottom 
 to these places with the ends of their paddles, and there- 
 after were very careful to see that they did not fall out 
 of their boats. There have been times when a whole herd of 
 elk perished miserably, hip-deep in muck, before finally the 
 buzzard came to feast. 
 
 There were a few places such as Eagle Ridge and the 
 wooded shores of Pelican Bay where his mother might lead 
 him in safety, although she stepped carefully even here. 
 
 In their wanderings they met the entire animal popula- 
 tion of the Oregon forests. Sometimes old Woof, the black 
 bear, aroused from his bad dreams in the brush coverts, 
 rose up with his characteristic cry and startled them, yet 
 not even the little blacktail deer were afraid of Woof. He 
 was a berry eater, not a hunter of meat, and his cross dis- 
 position is a legend merely. They saw the lynx that always 
 looked hungrily at the little hind calf, but never dared 
 attack; the porcupine, grunting on the hillside and trying 
 with stupid senses to get some meaning out of life; and 
 those inglorious cowards, the coyotes, weeping and wailing 
 in the twilights. They knew also the chipmunks that like 
 to lie still and pretend they are dead leaves in the gnarled, 
 uncovered roots of a tree; the gray squirrels that work all 
 fall to put away their stores of acorns; the snowshoe rab- 
 bits; and, of course, their own lesser cousins, the deer. They 
 knew what it was to see the hen mallard swim away with 
 her flock when they came down to the water's edge to 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 265 
 
 drink, and more than once they were startled by the roar of 
 the wild geese's wings on the lake shore. 
 
 One night, when summer was quite done, they encountered 
 Whisperfoot. Although he did not know it — for not even 
 human insight can foresee the unfolding of events — it was 
 one of the few real epochs of Baby Bill's life. 
 
 He had grown bolder with the passing months, and late 
 one afternoon was exploring a hillside, quite a long way 
 from the brushy covert where his mother was lying down. 
 The air was crisp with the chill of early fall, instilling new 
 energy in the fawn's blood. He was giving no thought to 
 danger; Tather, he was quite eaten up with curiosity as to 
 what had become of the green leaves that used to catch his 
 eye with their shimmer in the sunlight. Seemingly they 
 had all gone, or turned to the color of the marsh grass. He 
 didn't know that the fall frost had already seared them. 
 He had been only dimly aware that the days had steadily 
 shortened as the flowers had perished; and he was really 
 surprised when the sun dropped suddenly down behind a dis- 
 tant mountain. 
 
 His feeling of security and comfort deserted him. Sunset, 
 to the wild creatures, means something entirely different 
 than to human beings. With the latter, it is a glorious 
 view of red clouds in the West and the realization that 
 it will soon be dinner time. But sunset to the forest folk 
 means the sudden shadow of the wings of danger. For cer- 
 tain reasons of his own, Baby Bill did not like to be alone 
 on the hillside when twilight fell. 
 
 At this hour too many mountain lions yawned in their 
 lairs, and went out with pale-blue eyes to hunt. Too many 
 lynx crept through the tree limbs, and too many wolves 
 came stealing through the underbrush. It was the hour of 
 
266 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 triumph for the hunting creatures. Moreover, there is 
 seemingly no pause between sunset and twilight. Unlike 
 the plains, the long shadows seem to descend with startling 
 swiftness. The sky turns green; the dusk grows between 
 the distant tree-trunks. 
 
 For an instant the fawn stood still, sniffing. There were 
 two menacing smells in the air, one entirely new; it was 
 so startlingly pungent, for a moment his senses did not fully 
 perceive the other. When they did, he sank down in the 
 dead leaves. 
 
 He knew this smell, even half-effaced as it was with 
 the new one that seemed to come down from the hillside just 
 above him. It was the wild, heart-freezing odor of a cougar, 
 so familiar in the short months of his life. He hadn't had 
 to be taught its menace. Many little voices inside of him, 
 many little quivers of his skin, told him all about it. For 
 ever and ever his breed had known the great felines, — from 
 the first day his broad-horned ancestors had fled from the 
 saber-tooths in the young days of the world. 
 
 His little body did not seem to move. One of the first 
 laws of the forest is to learn to lie without a twitch of an 
 ear or the movement of a hair, for motion, not outline, is 
 most clearly visible to the eyes of the hunting creatures. 
 Outline, through the beneficence of Nature, usually is 
 blended and lost in the light and shadow of the under foliage, 
 but the slightest motion is instantly detected. 
 
 Baby Bill had learned this lesson long ago, if instinct had 
 not whispered it when he yet dwelt in his mother's womb; 
 and he was relying on it now. His only motion was a 
 slow, almost imperceptible movement of his eyeballs in 
 an effort to catch a glimpse of his foe. He had quite for- 
 gotten the new, pungent smell. 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 267 
 
 In an instant he was quite sure that no cougar was near. 
 It was still light enough to see plainly, and on the half- 
 open hillside, surely none of the great cats could escape 
 his gaze. Yet he was dimly uncomfortable from the 
 pungency of the smell. Now, as he waited, it weakened 
 and died out. 
 
 But the cougar was very near indeed. The little fawn 
 could not see him because the foliage had recently turned 
 yellow from frost, making a perfect background for the 
 cougar's tawny body. This was the most perilous moment 
 of Baby Bill's life. 
 
 The great cat, who had survived many a fall season 
 and could see straight through the yellow leaves, had already 
 seen the fawn. It had been drowsy the moment before from 
 its afternoon nap. Now the languor in its eyes had given 
 way to a curious blue fire. It made a half circle to get 
 down-wind from the fawn. So absorbed was it by the mad- 
 ness of the hunt that it quite failed to detect what even 
 the blunt nose of a feline might otherwise have caught, — 
 this new, pungent odor coming down from the hillside. 
 
 The cougar began to advance, cautiously at first. It 
 meant to come as close as it could, taking advantage of 
 the tawny foliage, and then overtake the fawn in a short 
 chase. The wild heart leaped. The mother elk was ab- 
 sent, and there seemed no possibility of the calf's escape. 
 
 Then, looming with startling distinctness in the shrub- 
 bery, Baby Bill perceived the cougar. His instincts were 
 entirely true. He knew that the great cat had discovered 
 his hiding place and was even now bearing down upon 
 him. With a bleat of terror, he leaped up and sped away 
 down the hillside toward his mother. 
 
 By no mercy of the forest gods could the fawn have 
 
268 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 escaped, if it had not been for an entirely unlooked-for in- 
 terference of a spectator from the hill. The distance was 
 far, and although the fawn was swift, the cougar could 
 have overtaken him within a dozen leaps. However, there 
 is one thing in the material world even swifter than the 
 leap of a cougar, faster than the flight of a teal or the dart 
 of a serpent's head: a little fraction of an ounce of lead 
 and steel in the brass rifle shells that a certain naturalist, 
 known far and wide throughout the lake region, wore in 
 his belt. 
 
 Nathan Funk was gray-haired, and he had seen many 
 winters; but his eye could still look sure and straight 
 along the barrel of his rifle. His hand was rather gray 
 from advancing years, but nis finger could press back true 
 and steady against a trigger. He knew all about cougars. 
 He was familiar with the astounding casualties they in- 
 flict yearly on the various families of the deer, and he had 
 no love for them. Besides, he was particularly interested 
 in the survival of the little herd of elk that still ranged 
 the forests of his home. 
 
 He had been sitting almost out of sight on the hill, 
 watching with delighted eyes the explorations of the elk 
 fawn. He hadn't been able to understand why it had 
 suddenly crouched, in such evident terror, in the thickets. 
 No Indian had a keener nose than Funk, yet he had been 
 wholly ignorant of the presence of the mountain lion creep- 
 ing through the shrubbery toward the fawn. He didn't see 
 the animal until it leaped. 
 
 There was scarcely time for aim. The gun shocked back 
 against his shoulder, and seemingly no effort or time had 
 been expended in getting it here. The finger closed against 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 269 
 
 the trigger, and the still mountain air seemed to shudder 
 from the report. 
 
 It was a clean, true shot, catching the great cat in mid- 
 spring; and the cougar was dead before he hit the ground. 
 The fawn dived into the heavy brush, then started to turn 
 up the hill again. He made a wide detour to avoid the 
 cougar's body, giving Nathan Funk time to hasten down 
 the hill and cut off the fawn's retreat. There, both rather 
 tremulous from the crisis of the moment before, Nathan 
 Funk and Baby Bill met for the first time. 
 
 The fawn drew up to a sliding halt, forty feet distant 
 from the man. For an instant the gray frontiersman stood 
 laughing into its face. 
 
 "Why, you scared little devil!" he called. "You little, 
 long-legged brainless! Why aren't you with your mother?" 
 
 The calf bleated and sped hastily away. But the moment 
 gave Nathan time to mark the well-built body, the sturdy 
 legs, the promise of greatness in the head and flanks. All 
 at once his bright eyes grew quiet. Here was a bull elk 
 which, if protected, might easily become the monarch of 
 all the forest. 
 
 Years before, when Nathan lived in the villages of men, 
 he had belonged to a great American fraternal order of which 
 the elk (or the wapiti, as he is more scientifically known) 
 is the emblem and the basis of the name. It was the custom, 
 in that order, to speak of the newly initiated as Baby Elks, — 
 and he remembered also it was part of the free, good humor 
 of the body to address fellow members as "Bill." Partly 
 because of a sense of humor that the dark hills had never 
 killed, and partly as a kindly whim of a wise naturalist who 
 had established brotherhood with the forest creatures, he 
 seized upon this old appellation for the calf's name. 
 
270 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 "Baby Bill," he said— and laughed. "Baby Bill— if you 
 just keep up your present rate of growth, you're going to 
 be the Grand Exalted Ruler of this whole region, one of 
 these fine days." 
 
 After the rutting season Baby Bill was left to his own 
 devices. At first there were many nights of terror when 
 the wind mourned in the pines and the storm clouds of 
 late fall hid the moon and stars. But he was a swift little 
 elk by now; no cougar could overtake him in a straight- 
 out race. And Baby Bill was equipped with a large num- 
 ber of extra-keen senses that made it very hard for Whisper- 
 foot to effect a stalk. 
 
 The fall rains changed to snow, and Baby Bill followed 
 his herd down to the lower levels. He really didn't care 
 to grub his food through the six feet of snow that covered 
 the high plateaus. Besides, his old enemies, the wolf pack 
 — afraid of the frontiersman who lived in the lower hills — 
 kept a grim watch over the snow fields. The only un- 
 pleasant circumstance connected with the descent lay in the 
 fact that many of these mountain ranchers were almost 
 as dangerous foes as the wolves. Unlike old Nathan Funk, 
 they had no scruples against killing the last of the elk. 
 
 But spring came at last, and then a long, glorious sum- 
 mer. Baby Bill thought he must be a full-grown buck 
 by now, and he proved it by a pair of long, sharp spikes, 
 of which he was immensely proud. He was already larger 
 than most of the blacktail deer. Slowly he began to learn 
 that except for the wolf pack and the human hunters with 
 guns, he could make his own way in the lake region. 
 
 He was a swift runner, and the dangers of his youth 
 had taught him always to be on the alert. He had only 
 scorn for the lynx which looked after him with such hungry 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 271 
 
 speculations in their wild, green eyes. And Woof — once 
 in his third year, when his spikes had fallen and grown 
 again to forked horns — treated him with considerable re- 
 spect in a chance meeting on the hillside. Nothing could 
 be more flattering than this. The most intellectual animal 
 in the Oregon woods — lacking, of course, in the cunning 
 of the wolves — Woof usually knew just who was who, and 
 what creatures it was best and wisest to treat with polite- 
 ness. And ever since the bull elk who led the herd had 
 accused him of having unseemly intentions toward one of 
 the hind calves, and had landed with both front feet on 
 Woof's furry sides, the old black bear had always had a 
 courteous word for all the males of the species! 
 
 This was living: to wake from the long slumber of 
 the afternoons, to steal up the hillsides, to snort defiance 
 to the lynx and coyote and to know the wild excitement 
 of the hunting hour. He liked to make swift dips into the 
 glens — perhaps to a salt lick or a water pool — and now 
 and then he enjoyed running about, half the night, with 
 no particular destination in view. His strength grew with 
 every day. His muscles hardened, and his frame was mighty. 
 
 Sometimes he had half-angry combats with the young 
 males of his own age — there were half a dozen, perhaps, 
 who had survived the winter — and he learned a certain skill 
 with the weapons Nature had given him. Another year, 
 and he became increasingly careless as to the size and 
 age of the bulls he combated. Deep down in his heart — 
 or wherever the bull elk has such impulses — he began secretly 
 to dream of fighting the great bull leader himself. 
 
 Of course, he was not aware of the watch Nathan Funk 
 kept over him. True, he caught far-off glimpses of the man 
 sometimes. But as Funk was the only human being who 
 
272 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 lived in that part of the range, he had no opportunity 
 to become used to the sight of these strange, forked crea- 
 tures. However, he did fear them. 
 
 "Most of all, fear men," is an old law in the forest, 
 and as the years passed Baby Bill began to see the wis- 
 dom of it. There seemed to be one stretch of range, be- 
 tween Lake of the Woods and the eastern lakes, where 
 the herd could roam in safety. True, Nathan Funk had 
 his cabin there, but the strange thing that glittered always 
 in his hands did not speak death as in the case of the 
 frontiersmen at the other side of the range. The creatures 
 of the wild are exceedingly stupid about some things, but 
 few indeed did not know of the deadliness of men and rifles. 
 
 This little band of elk particularly had learned the les- 
 son long ago. It could not seem to gain. Every year the 
 does brought forth their young, but by the end of the first 
 season, half of them were gone. Some were killed by the 
 cougars, and natural disasters — cold and breaking ice and 
 hunger — accounted for many more. All through the sea- 
 sons that followed there were constant casualties. The rifles 
 of men spoke pitilessly from the brush coverts, from plat- 
 forms built over the deer licks. With the coming of the 
 snow wolves always remained. 
 
 There was but one pack, made up of all the individuals 
 in the immediate region; but their track was wide. Each 
 winter they swept the uplands clean. A mountain lion 
 quite often misses its stroke, as does any hunting creature 
 which depends upon a surprise attack and a single, death- 
 dealing blow. But when once the wolf pack finds the trail 
 of game, death always waits at the end of it. In the late 
 winter, the starving time in the mountain realm, even the 
 lakes and rivers that might obliterate a track are frozen. 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 273 
 
 So far Baby Bill had escaped, and when he had reached 
 his seventh year, there was no more magnificent animal 
 in the whole Oregon forest than he. He was full-grown; 
 his strength was at its height; he knew the last refinements 
 in the use of hoof and antler. Whisperfoot crept from 
 his trail when he heard his step. Nathan Funk marvelled 
 from afar at the development of muscle, the beauty of antler 
 and coat, the stately carriage. Except for the wolf pack, 
 there was but one forest power that he had not yet mas- 
 tered: the great bull leader of the herd. 
 
 The leaves died and littered the ground, and the last 
 of the velvet was rubbed from Baby Bill's horns. Late one 
 afternoon, when the sky was full of southern-flying water- 
 fowl, he awakened from a nap in the buckbrush to sense 
 a new stir and impulse in the air. He didn't understand 
 at first. He felt restless and, in some vague way, half- 
 angry. He had lain down with perfect complacency some 
 hours before. Evidently the wings of the waterfowl had 
 brought some change, a new essence and magic in the air. 
 
 These had been great days. He had lived the life of 
 a forest monarch, fearing no trails except the trail of men, 
 sleeping and feeding at will, bathing in the long, still, dusky 
 sloughs, reveling in the crisp dawns and the mysterious nights, 
 running to exhaustion over the ridges. He had felt no need 
 of the protection of the herd. The snows, when the wolves 
 must be considered, were yet far distant. Now, in a mo- 
 ment, all was changed. He tried to go to his feeding — 
 that tremulous advance over the grass-covered hillsides — but 
 the tender herbage was dry as dust in his mouth. There 
 were vague promptings in his blood he could not understand, 
 a strange loneliness that gave way to an actual sense of 
 excitement. 
 
274 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 It must be confessed that Baby Bill had no memory 
 to speak of at all. Otherwise he could have remembered 
 another crisp evening, just a year before, when the same 
 uneasiness had come upon him, and thus recognized the 
 symptoms. If he could have looked back two years, he 
 could have remembered it again. The ruminants have no- 
 toriously more beauty than brains; and even Woof, famously 
 forgetful, would have been ashamed of any such loss of 
 memory as this. The explanation of his uneasiness was 
 really very simple : it was the beginning of the rutting season. 
 
 Suddenly he remembered the herd, the trim females, that 
 followed the great bull leader. Like the wind, he headed 
 across the ridge toward it. No man can say how he knew 
 the direction. It seemed far too distant for the wind to 
 carry a scent; yet he went straight, as the bee goes with 
 her load of honey. 
 
 He did not recall that just a year before he had raced 
 across the ridges to join the herd. Possibly it was just 
 as well, for on that occasion, the great bull leader had been 
 waiting for him, and they had fought a long time in 
 an old burn on the hillside. It had been a very painful 
 and disagreeable experience. After a fight that had taxed 
 the last ounce of the leader's strength, Baby Bill had been 
 beaten off. Wounded and bleeding and exhausted, all his 
 amor for the trim females had been knocked out of him. 
 
 Of course, the herd leader would be waiting again, but 
 Baby Bill did not give him a thought. As long as a 
 patriarch is able to defeat all contestants for his place, he 
 does not divide his harem with lesser bulls. The great 
 elk headed down the ridges, his horns lowered to his shoul- 
 ders, the thickets giving way before him. He made no 
 effort to go silently. He cared not at all for the wolf pack 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 275 
 
 that would soon be gathering. A large cougar heard him 
 coming when he was still a great distance off, but very 
 wisely turned from the trail. For once old Woof, who 
 in his pride does not like to give way to any living creature 
 in the forest, pretended he had business that took him off 
 the trail into the berry thickets. And most portentous 
 of all, Baby Bill even forgot the existence of his arch-enemy, 
 man; he would almost have run over any human hunters 
 that might have been in his path. 
 
 When he got within one hundred yards of the herd, he 
 slackened his pace to a stately walk. He had no intention 
 of compromising his dignity by rushing up to the herd in a 
 frenzied run. The dignity of the larger forest creatures 
 is very dear to them, and there are no more arrogant show- 
 offs in the whole forest world than the elks. It was the 
 same instinct that makes a human wooer stop to arrange 
 his tie before he rings the doorbell. Baby Bill wanted to 
 make his appearance just as glorious and stately as possible. 
 With antlers thrown back at the most becoming attitude, 
 with nose lifted, and stepping grandly, he strode down to- 
 ward the herd. 
 
 The does seemed to be waiting for him in a little green 
 glen beside a spring. The glory of fall was over the for- 
 est world. The leaves were scarlet and yellow, the sky was 
 seer, the wild geese called from the clouds. The herd 
 thrilled as he came. The great herd leader snorted his de- 
 fiance. 
 
 It was a peculiar sound, hard to imitate, — a sort of escap- 
 ing-steam explosion, beginning with a high, whistling snort 
 and descending to a bovine-like bawl. It was the challenge, 
 never to be forgotten. He saw the trim cows, their specu- 
 lative eyes, and the blood seemed to heat and leap in his 
 
276 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 veins. Wholly without conscious design, he found himself 
 replying to the challenge. 
 
 Then the great bull rushed him. There were none of 
 the formalities such as precede a battle between bull ele- 
 phants in India or the old-time conflicts of the bison on 
 the plains. He simply charged, — without a second's pause. 
 For long years he had ruled the herd, and he had no in- 
 tention of yielding his leadership or part of his harem to 
 this arrogant seven-year-old. The eyes flamed, a snort of 
 wrath carried far through the silences between the tree 
 trunks, and the magnificent head lowered. 
 
 The two bulls met with a resounding shock. But the 
 herd leader had gathered a tremendous momentum in his 
 long run, and the same thing happened that occurs w T hen a 
 runaway train strikes a passenger coach standing on a side 
 rail: Baby Bill was knocked heels over head, off his feet 
 and prone in the pine needles. 
 
 The herd leader had every right to think the fight should 
 have ended at this point. What followed was a distinctly 
 unpleasant surprise. He had rushed over to the fallen elk 
 to administer, at his leisure, a few finishing touches that 
 might teach Baby Bill his place. Of course, they might 
 kill him; if they did, it wouldn't much matter. Any- 
 way, they would show him the folly of interfering in other 
 men's families. He supposed that all resistance was com- 
 pletely knocked out of the fallen bull. 
 
 With an agility wholly unsuspected in so vast a creature, 
 Baby Bill got his legs under him and leaped. An instant 
 before he had seemed quite helpless. The next, he came 
 lunging up like a torpedo out of the sea, — with the power 
 of his great flanks behind him. It was a rather startling 
 instance of a "come-back." The only possible explanation 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 277 
 
 was that Baby Bill had muscular development and agility 
 superior to any other bull elk of his time. He lunged 
 with tremendous force, and his horns caught the herd leader 
 in the tender realm beneath his chin. 
 
 Then the battle began in earnest. This was no ordinary 
 fight, such as the herd leader was wont to wage with the 
 two and three-year-old bulls for the amusement and edifica- 
 tion of his cows. For once he had met an opponent worthy 
 of his antlers! This was no cougar, to be slashed into fur 
 patches with his front hoofs; no coyote, to flee from the 
 trail. Baby Bill also recognized the encounter as something 
 far different from the fights of his fawnhood. The herd 
 leader had engaged in many battles; he was a magnificent 
 example of the breed, and he knew the fighting game from 
 handshake to gong. 
 
 A fight between bull elks is usually a swift affair. With 
 such weapons as the multiple-bladed daggers they wore on 
 their heads and their sharp-edged front feet, casualties hap- 
 pen swiftly. But the two bulls were remarkably evenly 
 matched in this battle. The sunset glamor had died on the 
 high peaks without either gaining an edge. 
 
 Their horns clicked, and now and then one would see 
 an opportunity to administer a lashing, cutting blow with 
 the front feet. Their hides were no longer glossy and 
 smooth ; their nostrils were red ; their eyes glowed in the half- 
 darkness. The cows milled uneasily; the sound of combat 
 carried far. 
 
 Then Baby Bill effected as clever a piece of maneuvering 
 as the great pines, which have seen more battles than most 
 people would care to count, had ever beheld. Usually the 
 elk does not show any particular craft in his battles. They 
 are affairs of main strength and agility, — driving, thrust- 
 
278 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 ing, lashing in when an opening comes, recoiling to lash 
 again. The elk is not an intellectual animal; but the strat- 
 egy that Baby Bill effected would have done credit to 
 Woof or Graycoat. 
 
 He managed, wholly unsuspected by the herd leader, to 
 circle about and get his opponent between two great, 
 converging dead trunks of trees. Then he began to force 
 him back into the little corner where the trunks crossed. 
 When the herd leader was so cramped for room that he 
 could not recoil or strike, before he could break his way out, 
 Baby Bill lunged at him. 
 
 In the half-shadows, the cows could scarcely see just 
 what occurred. Besides, it was almost too swift for the eye 
 to follow. The herd leader went down, and Baby Bill's 
 front hoofs lashed at him again and again. Then, be- 
 cause the herd leader lay still, he lowered his head to finish 
 the work. 
 
 He struck just once, a lashing blow in which tine clicked 
 against tine. He started to draw back to strike again; but 
 instead of the bleat of surrender and the snort of triumph, 
 the waiting does heard only a curious, frenzied thrashing 
 in the half-shadows. It increased to a thunderous uproar. 
 A panic passed as if by wings from one of the cows to an- 
 other. They darted away in terror. Then, because exhaus- 
 tion had come, the sound was slowly quieted. The two 
 great elk lay quietly, head to head ; their great horns had be- 
 come interlocked in the final second of battle and could not 
 be broken apart. 
 
 Old Nathan Funk had seen many winters, but their 
 fogs had never got into his eyes. He still had remarkable 
 powers of vision. In some ways, it was ever surer than in 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 279 
 
 his youth. Time was when he had shot at an upright stump 
 across a thousand yards of chasm, thinking it was a deer; 
 but these times were passed. He knew the mountains now, 
 ■ — their light and shadow, the variation of foliage, and he 
 was well acquainted with the tricks they could play upon the 
 vision. Natural camouflage — the tawny coloring of a cougar 
 or the stripes of a chipmunk — could no longer avail against 
 him. Naturalist that he was, he had trained his eyes to 
 detect instantly the outline of any living creature in his 
 vicinity. 
 
 One late fall day, when he passed on the hillside a 
 quarter of a mile above a curious little glen beside a spring, 
 his careless gaze was suddenly arrested by a curious, brown 
 shadow among the fallen tree trunks. No tenderfoot could 
 have seen as much. A field glass could have moved across 
 the glen without revealing it. His eye caught and rested 
 upon it through no conscious intent of his own. 
 
 For an instant he was puzzled. It was not a deer, feed- 
 ing in the soft grass of the ravine ! And it was far too large 
 for the prone body of either a deer or a bear ! 
 
 He looked a long time, then turned down the hill. In 
 an instant the brown shadow was obscured behind a fallen 
 tree trunk. But his years in the mountains had taught him 
 how to mark down a place and move right toward it. No 
 similarity of tree trunk or shadow or brush covert could 
 lead him astray. 
 
 Then the sharp-eyed magpies that chattered in the branches 
 — already making large speeches about their winter plans 
 when they should get to the southern resorts — might have 
 beheld a curious shock and pain strike the old mountaineer's 
 face. His eyes suddenly clouded. His bronzed brow was 
 furrowed. For he thought he had come to the end of a 
 
280 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 trail that for the past half-dozen years had given him such 
 delight to follow. 
 
 Broad antlers would sweep no more through his native 
 forest. The monarchs of the woods had fallen at last; 
 their reigns were done. After all his effort to preserve them, 
 the two noblest elk of the little remaining band had met a 
 tragic end. They were lying, close together, in the dead 
 pine needles. Not a quiver of a flank told him that life 
 remained in their great bodies. 
 
 He understood in a moment. The antlers were tightly 
 locked. It was apparent the two patriarchs had died of 
 hunger and thirst. 
 
 He came near, very sorrowfully, and looked down at 
 the majestic forms. Evidently death had been but a recent 
 claimant. The buzzards had not yet descended, and usually 
 they are very prompt. Yet their forms were wasted, as if 
 by days of starvation. 
 
 Then old Nathan Funk opened his drooping lips and 
 shouted with joy. For one of the elk — the larger, although 
 the points on his antlers were not so many — had opened his 
 great, brown, tender eyes. 
 
 Nathan did not ordinarily move swiftly. He had learned 
 from the wild creatures a certain smoothness and ease of 
 motion that is a wonderful saver of animal energy. At 
 that moment, he seemed to come to life. He sprang over 
 the fallen logs as a deer springs from beneath the talons 
 of a cougar. Then he knelt beside the great, broad-antlered 
 head of Baby Bill. He touched the soft flesh of the throat. 
 
 It was still warm. The animal was hovering at the very 
 frontier of death, yet enough life remained to enable him 
 to follow the man's motions with his eyes. There was 
 no fear in them, however. Fear is a matter of self-preserva- 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 281 
 
 tion, — and Baby Bill had forgotten it in the shadow of death. 
 It seemed to Nathan that the soft eyes were appealing to 
 him for help. 
 
 "Keep up the old spirit, Baby Bill," the man said swiftly. 
 "I'll have you loose in a minute. We'll save you yet." 
 
 Then Nathan passed to the body of the herd leader ; the 
 skin was cold. Not a flicker of life remained. For a mo- 
 ment he worked to separate the horns, but he couldn't move 
 the great bodies enough to effect it. Then with his hand 
 axe he broke the tines of the dead elk's antlers. In a mo- 
 ment, Baby Bill was free. But he did not get up. No 
 strength remained in the powerful form for that. 
 
 To a man of less determination, the attempt to save Baby 
 Bill's life would have been given up at this stage. The elk 
 was evidently too weak to nourish, — and besides, he was only 
 a dumb animal anyway. But the issue went deep with 
 Nathan. He was a lonely man, his loves and hatreds were the 
 simple, heart-devouring, primitive emotions of the mountain 
 people ; and this great elk he had named was one of his few 
 interests. 
 
 It has been written by the first Judges of the Forest that 
 man loves most the things he owns, be it his humble home, 
 his rock-strewn farm, his sons, his horse or his dog. Any 
 sacrifice or effort is justified for one of these. Old Nathan 
 felt an actual sense of possession in the great stag he 
 had protected as a fawn, and named, and guarded all through 
 its earlier years, — and nothing must be left undone to save 
 his life. 
 
 He hurried to the spring and filled his hat with water. 
 Forcing the elk's lips apart he poured it, a little at a time, 
 into the throat. The effect was really astonishing. At 
 the first swallow Baby Bill coughed and quivered in his 
 
282 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 bed. Nathan went back for another hatful, which he ad- 
 ministered in the same slow way. When the third was swal- 
 lowed, the stag was able to lift his muzzle an inch or so 
 off the ground. Nathan was trembling with delight when 
 he went back for the fourth. 
 
 He thought it was probable that much reserve strength 
 still lingered in the elk's body. Possibly it had worn itself 
 to utter exhaustion, weakened as it had been by lack of 
 food and water, by a frenzied effort to shake free from the 
 dead elk. The older animal, lacking in Baby Bill's vitality, 
 had perished the night before. 
 
 When Baby Bill's thirst was satiated, Nathan took out 
 his handkerchief, tied it on the dead limb of a tree and thrust 
 it up as a banner beside the bodies. He didn't wish to 
 take chances on any cougar or wolf discovering Baby Bill 
 in his absence. The fluttering cloth would keep the beasts 
 of prey at a distance for a few hours. Then he hurried 
 to his cabin. 
 
 He came back heavily laden, with blankets, food for 
 himself, a few cooking utensils and a number of incidentals 
 for use in treating Baby Bill. He made his camp within 
 a few feet of the two bodies, first pulling away, little by 
 little, the dead herd leader. Next he built a high fire. He 
 knew that warmth, above all else, would bring back life 
 to the weakened tissue of the stag. 
 
 It was a long week's work before Nathan knew he had 
 succeeded. His coffee went creamless that week, for he 
 poured all his cans of evaporated milk down the throat of 
 the elk. Then came the time when the animal could raise 
 its head and munch the tender grass its nurse had cut. 
 At the end of ten days, Baby Bill was able to stand for a 
 few minutes on his feet. 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 283 
 
 The first snow fell that night, but quickly melted in 
 the little, cold shower of rain which followed. It was per- 
 fectly evident that Nathan could not remain many more 
 days to treat his patient. Winter was breaking swiftly, and 
 a man wants warm walls and a fireplace during the winters 
 of the plateaus. One day he returned to his cabin for his 
 snowshoes, — to get him out of the glen in case of emergency. 
 
 One result of this little episode even Nathan had not 
 anticipated. In his days of weakness, Baby Bill had lost 
 all fear of his nurse. There are few creatures in the whole 
 animal world more easily domesticated than the deer, which 
 respond more quickly to tenderness and care. Evidently 
 Baby Bill had accepted Nathan as a protector and guardian 
 for life. The first walking he did was to follow the front- 
 iersman, just as a dog follows his master, in his work about 
 the camp. 
 
 "This won't do," Nathan told him once in immeasurable 
 delight; "I can't have you for a lap-dog, you big, thousand- 
 pound brute." 
 
 Baby Bill began to range farther from the camp, but he 
 returned nightly, when fear came on the wind, to Nathan's 
 protection. Strength came back to the knitted muscles; 
 spirit returned to the great eyes. 
 
 One morning, waking to find three inches of snow over 
 his coverlet, Nathan knew it was time to leave the stag 
 to his own devices. 
 
 "Good-by, old fellow," he said when his supplies were 
 packed. He caressed the great neck. "I've brought you 
 through, Baby Bill, as one Elk must to another" — a smile 
 lingered on his tanned face — "because I haven't forgotten 
 why I named you Bill. And now you have to shift for your- 
 self." 
 
284 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 He turned down the trail. But he looked back after he 
 had gone one hundred yards. He wanted to see once more 
 the stately form, the long sweep of majestic antlers that 
 would soon fall before the will of Manitou. He was as- 
 tonished to find the great fellow plugging Contentedly 
 along behind him. 
 
 "Good Lord, Bill!'* he cried. "This won't do at all. 
 I've fed you all I'm going to, and I'm going home. You 
 run away and find that herd you've earned the right to 
 rule." 
 
 It became necessary to throw sticks and stones at the 
 great bull before he could be made to know his presence 
 was no longer desired. And feeling some way deeply lonely, 
 Nathan Funk hastened to his cabin. 
 
 The waterfowl had passed, and winter was at hand. 
 Baby Bill had not yet found his herd. A few inches of 
 snow had fallen, which had been a signal for them to de- 
 scend to the lower foothills. The great elk munched for 
 a few days on the top of the shrubbery, grubbing through 
 the snow for grass, and then he himself turned down the 
 trail. 
 
 The chill of early winter was over the mountains and 
 the joy of living was at its height. Baby Bill had never 
 felt so proud before. He had conquered the bull leader, 
 and he knew he had only to overtake the herd to become 
 its leader. Again the cougar would flee from his path ; and 
 for the time being, in the glory of his new strength, he 
 quite forgot the wolf pack. However, no one can forget 
 the wolf pack forever. So long as winter comes to the 
 wilderness, the wolves will keep their grim watch. 
 
 Just as dawn broke, one icy day, Baby Bill heard them 
 calling on the ridge. 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 285 
 
 For an instant he stood quite still, shivering. It was the 
 same old rising and falling chant, the most typical of all 
 the wilderness voices. The pack had gathered, and it was 
 hungry. 
 
 The stag stole on, taking advantage of all the brush 
 coverts. He did not want the long-range eyes of the wolves 
 to catch sight of his shadow on the snow. He had almost 
 forgotten the meaning of terror in the weeks he had spent 
 under the guardianship of Nathan Funk, for no harm 
 could come to him then. But in an instant all his inborn 
 fear returned. 
 
 The call was not a new voice to him — he had heard it 
 many times before — but always before the pack had failed 
 to find his trail. He knew perfectly the fate of those whose 
 trail they did find. The hair crept along his spine. 
 
 All at once he leaped forward in a frenzy. The pack 
 suddenly bayed behind him, a cry that even a tenderfoot 
 could not have mistaken. They had crossed his tracks at 
 last. From then on the chase was a trial of speed and en- 
 durance. The elk's body stretched out, the powerful limbs 
 contracted, the horns lay back over the shoulders. 
 
 He was, however, running a losing race. The wolves 
 were ineffably patient. They had only to follow the trail, 
 hour on hour, with victory certain in the end. No tricks 
 of back-tracking could bewilder them; and the elk would 
 ultimately tire out. At noon, or at night, or the next day's 
 noon, they would come up to him, at bay at last or fallen 
 from exhaustion. There were no rivers on this side of the 
 divide where he could find refuge. The ice of the dawn 
 had blasted the one hope the elk had left; it had made a 
 thick crust of ice over the lakes wherein otherwise he might 
 find refuge. 
 
286 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 The wolves bayed again, and swung merrily on the trail. 
 
 The same crisp dawn found Nathan Funk walking across 
 the snow fields toward a little frontier store far beyond the 
 marshy end of Lake of the Woods. It was his last trip, 
 for the greater part of his winter's supplies had already been 
 laid in. It isn't well to attempt to winter in the moun- 
 tains with a half-empty larder. The deer descend to the 
 foothills, and the snow has a way of lying in impassable 
 drifts far into the spring. 
 
 He hadn't thought it necessary to take his snowshoes. As 
 the snow was only a few inches deep, he could make better 
 time without them. He didn't think it likely that the snow 
 would become impassable before night. If it did, he could 
 borrow a pair of snowshoes for his return trip. He hastened 
 down the long ridge to the shores of the lake and paused 
 for a moment to wonder at the depth of ice. Wrapped in 
 his warm mackinaw, he didn't realize that the temperature 
 was down to zero. 
 
 All at once he became aware that clouds were deepen- 
 ing above him. They lay in heavy banks, promising snowfall 
 before the night. Unless he hurried, it might be necessary 
 to borrow a pair of snowshoes after all, a proceeding that 
 would necessitate a tedious trip to return them. So he 
 turned a little from his course, intending to save time by 
 a short cut across the marsh. 
 
 A large flock of probably two hundred mallards rose with 
 a thunder of wings. Evidently they had been sitting on the 
 ice crust that covered the shallow pools of the marsh. He 
 watched their even flight until the cloud banks obscured 
 them. 
 
 He then dipped down into the tules. There is a strange 
 melancholy about the tule lands. They are so brown, so 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 287 
 
 bleak, and the wind has an unfamiliar note as it brushes 
 across them. No man who has heard the stir of tules in the 
 wind and the soft wail that is the overtone of the gale 
 itself, can possibly forget them. 
 
 A strange loneliness came over Nathan, a sense of in- 
 finite isolation. The earth trembled and rocked beneath his 
 feet. Yet it was only a narrow strip of marsh, and in a 
 moment more he would be upon the firm hillside. Again 
 a flock of ducks rose before him, and he lifted his eyes to 
 watch them. He had not particularly noticed that he had 
 come upon a strip of marsh where the tule growth was al- 
 most entirely absent. He was walking on the snow-covered 
 ice of one of the many little potholes found in all the lake- 
 region marshes, and only became aware of it when the 
 ice broke suddenly beneath his step. Unlike the lower lake 
 ice, it was the thinnest crust. Because of the water beneath 
 that had melted the snow as it fell, the white covering was 
 equally shallow. 
 
 Nathan leaped in sudden realization of peril. He had 
 waded into one of the quagmire pools, those bottomless 
 morasses all residents of the marshes, sooner or later, learn 
 to dread. His reflexes had been perfect. He had leaped 
 in the single second of his descent. But the quagmire had 
 already closed around his knees and he fell forward from 
 his hips. 
 
 The terror of the mud lies in the lack of traction. Any 
 effort to obtain leverage only results in sinking farther 
 into the mire. Nathan knew well enough not to make a 
 frenzied struggle. His long years in the mountains had 
 disciplined his self-control, and his first effort was by lean- 
 ing forward to check his descent. 
 
 He had already dropped almost to his hips, but because 
 
288 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 of the increasing resistance of the mire, his descent was 
 almost impeded. With one hand he seized the roots of 
 some aquatic plants, the other still held his rifle. 
 
 After the first moment of blind terror had passed, when 
 the full realization of his predicament had been brought 
 home to him, it occurred that he might thrust his gun into 
 the mire to use as a pry. His will dispatched the message, 
 but long training kept his arm still lifted. In the first 
 place, the mire was especially deep, and the end of the 
 butt would not afford as much resistance as one of his boots. 
 The gun would soon be choked with the mud, and all his 
 wilderness training forbade any action that would take away 
 his means of self-defense. The snow was over the lake re- 
 gion, and the pack had gathered. 
 
 Slowly, as the cold descended upon him, the lines deep- 
 ened in his dark face. He knew where he stood. There 
 is no more deserted region in the whole United States than 
 the great pine belt between Lake of the Woods and the 
 Klamath Lakes, when winter snows have made the few 
 mountain roads impassable. His one hope was that some 
 trappti or hunter, by the fortune of the gods, would pass 
 in hearing and give him aid. 
 
 The frozen mire was chilling his blood. The hand that 
 grasped the tule roots already seemed numb from the icy 
 water. And the wind wept as it swept over the reeds. 
 
 Very carefully he counted in his mind his supply of 
 rifle cartridges; his gun held six. It was loaded and ready. 
 He had, perhaps, twenty others in his pockets, more than 
 is usually carried by a wayfarer in the mountains. Some 
 of these might be expended in the old distress signal with 
 which most frontiersmen are familiar. The gun, however, 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 289 
 
 must be kept full for any foes that might discover him in 
 his helplessness. 
 
 Seemingly without conscious effort he heard himself say- 
 ing, "Funk, it's the end. You've reached the end." 
 
 His eyes were clear, and he saw the truth. The cold 
 was descending upon him. Soon the snows would follow. 
 By no power of mortal strength could he extricate him- 
 self from the mire. There was no food; and death comes 
 quickly in the mountain nights to unprotected hungry men. 
 Not even the bull elk, lying with antlers caught in the 
 antlers of his foe, had been in such a perilous predica- 
 ment as he. Aid had come to the elk after many days, 
 but none was to come to him; even the elk himself could 
 not pay back his debt. 
 
 The marsh where he lay was far distant from the trails 
 of men. Not even hunters would come here. And they must 
 come soon, too, — for the cold could not be endured long. 
 The only remaining consolation was one so strange and eery 
 that the wind might have brought it across the tules: it 
 was the thought of the last bullet in his rifle magazine, a 
 swift and certain victory in uttermost despair. 
 
 There was no heat in the sun that climbed the sky that 
 morning. The clouds lay between. The wind blew, and 
 died away, and blew again in many little storms all after- 
 noon. About noon a flock of geese passed low over the marsh 
 and wailed down to the dark face they saw among the 
 tules. 
 
 "Thou knowest now," their strange wail might have said. 
 "Thou knowest the marshes as we know them, and the 
 death that stalks across them." 
 
 Yes, he knew. Old Nathan Funk now understood why 
 the cry of the geese was so eery and sad in winter. 
 
290 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 He tried to shift in his position and relieve his strain- 
 ing muscles. He only sank deeper in the mire. For the 
 first hour there had been the agony of cold and fatigue; 
 but this had quite passed by now. The cold water and 
 the cold earth had possessed a grim mercy for their prisoner. 
 Already their chill had stolen into him and, for a moment 
 at least, numbed his nerves and muscles. 
 
 He was clear to his waist in the mire, practically out 
 of sight of any one on the shore. He had slipped down, 
 little by little and almost imperceptibly, during the first 
 hour in the marsh. By now the mud had seemingly con- 
 gealed about him, and it was no longer necessary for him 
 to hold to the tule roots. The water of the pool was almost 
 up to his armpits. 
 
 Shortly after twelve o'clock, he fired a dozen of his 
 rifle shells in signals. Each shot reechoed endlessly, with 
 strange, tremulous shudderings across the marshes, but there 
 was no other response. He had a dozen shots remaining, 
 six in the gun and six buttoned into the game pocket of 
 his mackinaw shirt. To get at these he had to open his 
 coat, which would permit the full chill of the water to 
 flow in next to his skin. And it wasn't worth the added 
 cold and discomfort. If the report of the signals could 
 have carried ten miles in each direction, there would be 
 no one to hear him or come to his aid. 
 
 "It's the end," he said again — and he spoke the truth. 
 Unconsciousness was sweeping over him. The moment he 
 lost the power to call out, the last, feeble, flickering hope 
 of help was gone. Even a passer-by could not see him, 
 obscured as he was by the brown reeds. 
 
 A moment's shuddering terror passed over him, and he 
 dispelled the falling mists with the power of his will. Long 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 291 
 
 hours of agony, between wakefulness and unconsciousness, 
 might be his fate if he allowed himself to drop off. — There 
 was a better way. Then he smiled a little, facing the dark 
 forest on the ridge beyond. 
 
 He had been an old companion of these wilds. They had 
 conquered him at last, just as they conquered all things in 
 the end. The whole wilderness world seemed darkening 
 with shadows. 
 
 All at once he started, and opened his eyes. Tingling 
 through the frosty air he heard the far-off bay of the wolf 
 pack. They were chasing game, and some way it seemed 
 altogether fitting that he should hear their song in his last 
 hour of life. They were the very spirits of the wilder- 
 ness, the old, dread terrors of the snow, and their voices 
 represented the cry of triumph of the wild that had con- 
 quered him at last. 
 
 His hands gripped tighter on his rifle. It might be that 
 their keen noses would tell them of his presence, and many 
 and terrible are the stories of men who have been left 
 helpless in the track of wolves. They always seemed to 
 know, by some satanic cunning, who was helpless and who 
 was armed. They might wish to speed his departure. 
 
 They bayed again; and he knew that they were already 
 on the track of game. Their cries were wild, triumphant, 
 as if they had almost overtaken their quarry. As yet the 
 timbered ridge obscured them from his sight. 
 
 Nathan had interpreted their cry quite correctly. They 
 had almost overtaken their great game. It was the hour 
 of despair, not only for Nathan but for the monarch of the 
 forest, the great bull elk he had befriended. 
 
 Baby Bill was at the last stage of a long, hard race. 
 He had gained at first. The wolves, running by scent 
 
292 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 on his track, had not been able to go swiftly; but living 
 flesh is not constructed to endure many hours of such a 
 killing pace. At first he had flown, — a graceful thing 
 with wings, that hardly seemed to touch the ground with 
 his hoofs. Soon, however, the eyes started and the nostrils 
 reddened; and his heart seemed to shiver to pieces at every 
 beat. Finally he fell short in a leap, and sprawled, pant- 
 ing, to the ground. 
 
 Meanwhile the wolves had neither paused nor hurried. 
 They kept an easy gallop, seemingly not swift or hurried, 
 but which sped the long miles beneath them. Sometimes 
 they chorused but mostly ran in silence. They already 
 seemed to know that their victory was assured. The lakes 
 were frozen, and their own muscles were tireless. They 
 would dine at the end of the trail. 
 
 The stag heard them bay again, and leaped up. Again he 
 gained. But this time exhaustion came more quickly. Still 
 the wolves followed the trail. They didn't seem like mere 
 living animals. They Tan so steadily, so tirelessly, that 
 they began to partake of the quality of some inexorable 
 spirits of the snow, never to be shaken off, grim agents of 
 Fate itself. 
 
 Twice more Baby Bill ran to exhaustion, and each time, 
 when he paused to rest, the pack was nearer. The long 
 morning drew till afternoon. For the third time the pack 
 caught sight of him as he sprang up to run again. 
 
 The whole gray band seemed to leap forward. It was 
 the last lap of the race, with certain conquest in the end. 
 The wolves had seemingly sped swiftly before; now they 
 leaped like grayhounds about the margin of the lake. The 
 elk taxed all his magnificent strength for a last, furious ef- 
 fort. But he was already exhausted, and the pack, running 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 293 
 
 at top speed, did not fall behind again. The long pur- 
 suit evidently had net tired them at all. 
 
 The mountains rang with the hunting song: the old, 
 triumphant cry of the pack sure of its game. It carried far 
 across the waste of tules; and Nathan Funk, shaking off 
 the rising mists of unconsciousness, gripped his gun the 
 tighter. 
 
 The wolves might have been puzzled by a curious change 
 of direction in the elk's course. At first Baby Bill had 
 sped toward the lake, as all his instincts had prompted him 
 to do. But he did not find the glint of water in which he 
 might swim to safety. He only saw the wide, white sweep 
 of snow; and it was wholly possible his brute intelligence 
 did not even extend far enough to interpret the glittering 
 surface as that of the lake. At least, he did not venture 
 upon the ice. Instead he turned down the trail at its mar- 
 gin, toward the ridge beyond. 
 
 The wolves, if they had done any thinking about the 
 matter at all, would certainly have expected him to follow 
 down the trail until they overtook him, somewhere between 
 the lake and the top of the ridge. There was no hope of 
 safety in the less-pronounced trails to the right or left. Yet 
 to their surprise, the great bull suddenly turned to the right, 
 across a narrow neck of tule-grown marsh. 
 
 The explanation for this strange procedure goes too deep 
 into the multiple mystery of animal motive and intelligence 
 to be explained easily. The truth was that running along 
 the lake-side trail, he had encountered the cold track of 
 Nathan Funk who had passed this way early in the morn- 
 ing. No man may tell what impulses its dying smell aroused 
 in the nervous system of the animal, yet a certain measure 
 
294 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 of reaction, a certain stir and impulse in the memory must 
 have been the result. 
 
 It was Nathan's hour of trial, and perhaps Baby Bill 
 recalled another hour when death was a near shadow, when 
 the man of this same smell had been his protector. No hu- 
 man being understands enough of the psychology of animals 
 to say for certain that the stag did not consciously recog- 
 nize the track of the man who had befriended and fed him 
 in the previous month, and in this last, final moment of ter- 
 ror his first impulse was to return to his protection. For 
 the truth remained, where Nathan Funk had turned off 
 across the marsh, his footprints distinct in the soft mire 
 of the marsh, the bull elk turned off, too. 
 
 Nathan Funk, the life dying out of him as a fire dies, 
 waited to see the wolf-pack for the last time. The long 
 afternoon was almost at its close. The sky had the old 
 familiar bleakness and half-dusk that precedes the winter 
 sunset. The hunting-song chorused through the crisp at- 
 mosphere, and Nathan felt that when its last note had died, 
 the long trail of his own life would end. 
 
 He knew perfectly by no mercy of the forest-gods could 
 he survive the night in his present condition. He was wet 
 through and freezing, and no pity was ever met in the 
 bitter cold of the mountain night that would descend soon. 
 All his life he had studied the wild things of the forest — 
 their secret lives, their natures, their battles, their eery 
 dramas in the dawns; and he felt the curtain was going up 
 on the last of the forest-dramas he would ever see. In 
 a moment the game the pack was chasing would come into 
 sight, following the trail that led from the lake margin. 
 Then a few seconds later, the wolves would pass. They 
 had now almost overtaken their game. 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 295 
 
 He waited, silent. Then he uttered a long, hoarse, shud- 
 dering gasp of amazement. 
 
 The quarry had suddenly burst forth in clear sight. Na- 
 than knew him at the first glance. He could not mistake 
 the powerful form, the fleet legs, the majestic spread of 
 antlers: it was Baby Bill, the elk which had been the great- 
 est interest of his latter years. His trail, also, was almost 
 at the end. 
 
 The sight did not make his own passing any easier. He 
 had hoped for great things from Baby Bill. The elk had 
 been in his thoughts many times through the long after- 
 noon, and it had pleased his soaring fancy to think of the 
 magnificent bull elk living on, winter after winter, and con- 
 trolling ever more of the forest. 
 
 In that unclouded vision that men have in their dying 
 hours — a vision so clear that to misted mortal gaze it seems 
 strange and distorted — his mind had been full of mental 
 pictures of the forest king. He saw him in his revels; the 
 long wild races in the dawns; the stealing grazings in the 
 moonlight; the battles in the rutting season. It is not good 
 to leave one's home in stranger's hands. In some dim way 
 it had been a consolation to Nathan that he could leave the 
 forest region he loved to the bull elk. Baby Bill would know 
 its springs, its shadows in the dusk, its frosts in the dawns. 
 But now, a last blow from the skies, he was to see the 
 great stag perish before his eyes ! 
 
 The thought had not fully gone home, however, when a 
 new development in the race brought a sudden, overwhelm- 
 ing leap to his heart. The elk turned on the trail, and 
 came straight toward him. Of course, he was still running 
 along his protector's trail; and the man knew, with a sud- 
 
296 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 den burst of savage rapture, he was to have a part to play 
 in this last drama after all. 
 
 Already the wolves had burst from the timber, and follow- 
 ing the elk, they came straight toward him. 
 
 Events came quickly thereafter. He tore open his woolen 
 shirt, thanking God for the extra shells he carried in his 
 pocket. He snatched them and dropped them into a side 
 pocket where they would be immediately available. 
 
 The stag sped straight toward Nathan, still unaware of his 
 presence, for the tules hid his head and shoulders, the only 
 parts of him that protruded above the pool. Nathan had an 
 instant's wave of terror that the great stag was going to 
 tread on him. It reared suddenly up above the tules, im- 
 mense, heroic; then splashed down in the water beside him. 
 
 He had no time to realize that the elk, following his trail, 
 had been ensnared in the same pool of quagmire which had 
 enveloped him. 
 
 "Hello, Bill!" Nathan shrieked in rapture. Uncon- 
 sciously, he had given the greeting that members of the 
 great fraternal order to which both belonged were wont 
 to exchange in their good nature. "Lie still, and don't rear 
 up, so I can shoot." 
 
 It was a strange picture, startlingly clear in detail: the 
 yellow marshes, the timber stretching beyond, the snow fields 
 with the gray spirits of the snow, the wolf pack bounding 
 across them; and the elk and the man, side by side in the 
 mire. Already Nathan's rifle was at his shoulder, the barrel 
 extending over the body of the exhausted elk. And the 
 finger pressed back against the trigger! 
 
 He couldn't miss. In the first place, when Nathan Funk 
 looked along his gun barrel and missed, the forest people 
 went about their feeding with hushed voices. In the second, 
 
Brother Bill the Elk 297 
 
 the wolves were almost upon the elk. Lacking the stature 
 of Baby Bill, they did not see the man at all. Nathan held 
 hard to restrain a shout of rapture, and drew a quick bead 
 on the leader of the pack. He rolled forward and lay still 
 at the edge of the marsh. 
 
 Quickly the end of the barrel leaped to one side, and 
 then spoke again. These were the ancient enemies of the 
 elk, and Nathan had no mercy. The second wolf died, and 
 the others slid and scattered the snow as they tried to come 
 to an abrupt halt. Some turned, offering perfect broadside 
 shots. Once a well-aimed bullet accounted for two, — one 
 dead and one dying in the snow. There were ten individuals 
 in all ; but the old frontiersmen who, now and then, when the 
 tobacco is mellow, congregate around their firesides relate 
 how, with phenomenal accuracy, Nathan downed them all 
 before they could turn out of the marsh and reach the heavy 
 timber, a quarter of a mile beyond. Thus, for once, the 
 spirits of the snow were conquered, and for once, the Death 
 that lives in the winter cold went back to his shadows with 
 lowered wings. 
 
 With Baby Bill's great body to climb upon, the stout 
 horns to seize and hold, Nathan climbed out of the mire. It 
 was a tremendous effort. Weakened as he was, it took the 
 last of his strength. Before the twilight fell he had made 
 it, first to the back of the elk that shuddered and gasped 
 with terror, but could not move in the imprisoning mire, and 
 then to the tule turf beyond. Staggering but exultant, he 
 returned to his cabin, rested, braced himself with steaming 
 coffee and food, and in the dawn returned with a rope and a 
 saddle horse. 
 
 When the bull elk had been drawn from the mire and lay 
 exhausted in the tules, he came into the name by which 
 
298 The Heart of Little Shikara 
 
 naturalists were to know him in years to come. Uncon- 
 sciously, he had afforded an avenue of escape from a par- 
 ticularly unhappy and untimely death. 
 
 Nathan Funk gave the name to him as he lay by his 
 side in the tules, meanwhile kicking him softly with the toe 
 of his shoe and inquiring why he didn't go and take a bath 
 in some running stream and wash the mud from his flanks. 
 It was curious that Nathan gave no thought to the caked 
 mire which besmeared his own clothes, clear to the waist. 
 
 "Brother," he said with a strange note in his voice, "it's 
 all safe now, Bill. The pack's dead, and the country is all 
 yours without any one to question you," — a smile lighted 
 the dark face,— "Brother Bill." 
 
 There are no wolves to bay on the bull elk's trail now. 
 He lives his own life and rules his own way, and his 
 scepter is his two front hoofs, of which even Woof the bear 
 cannot doubt the authority. His crown is a magnificent 
 spread of antlers that each year are bigger and more ma- 
 jestic. Sometimes fortunate naturalists catch a glimpse of 
 him, leading his herd through the forest's trails. And if 
 they are members of the Order, they call him "Brother Bill 
 — the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Land of Sloughs." 
 
*V*r 
 
 THIS SOOK Sn T HE Sj,'i'«" T ° ""URN 
 W.LL INCREASE TO S l C L ^ ™ E PE "ALTY 
 DAY AND TO S..OO ON TH °« ™ E F °""TH 
 OVERDUE. THE SEVENTH DAY 
 
 __^B_12 1S48 
 
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 M18072 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY