They Who Walk in the Wilds/Bill
The wide river, gone shallow in the midsummer heats, ran sweetly under the starlight, babbling among its long s-and-bars and chafing with a soft roar against the ragged, un-covered ledges. The steep and lofty shores, at this point some four hundred yards apart, were black with forest to their crests. From a still pool close inshore sounded sharply the splash of a leaping salmon.
Presently from behind a dark promontory about a mile downstream came a muffled, rhythmic, throbbing noise, accompanied, as it grew louder, by a heavy splashing. A few moments more and a white steamboat, her flat sides dotted with lights from the cabin windows, rounded into view. She was a stern-wheeler—in river parlance a "wheelbarrow boat"—propelled by a single huge paddle-wheel thrust out behind her stern. Flat-bottomed like a scow and of amazingly light draught, she drew so little water that the river men used to declare she would need only a heavy dew to enable her to navigate across the meadows. Driving her way doggedly upwards against the stiff current, she puffed and grunted like some gigantic animal, and red sparks from her woodfed furnace streamed from the top of her lean black funnel. Her captain was driving her at top speed, because the river was falling so rapidly that he feared lest he might get hung up for lack of water in the channel before reaching his destination, which was yet a good day's journey distant.
In the long, lamp-lit cabin upstairs the few rough-clad passengers were smoking and playing cards, or dozing as well as they could on the stiff chairs, while a buxom, red-haired girl heroically strummed Moody-and-Sankey hymn-tunes on an unmelodious piano. There was no sleeping accommodation; for the old Forest Queen, except under stress of circumstances like the present, was wont to do all her journeying by daylight. But the passengers were not grumbling. All they wanted was to arrive—not to be hung up, by the shrinking of the stream, on some s-and-bar in the heart of the wilderness. They knew the anxious captain was making good time, and they were all in good temper.
All, with one exception. Down on the lower deck, in the wide space between the furnace door and the bows, among piled freight—boxes of smoked herring, kegs of molasses, cases of miscellaneous groceries, dry-goods, and hardware—was tethered an immense, long-haired, greyish brown goat, with an imposing beard hanging from his throat and a pair of formidable horns sweeping back from his massive forehead. This dignified-looking passenger was in a very bad temper indeed. His wishes had not been consulted in regard to the journey he was making. He had been hustled on board by the lusty deck hands with cheerful and irresistible familiarity; and he had had no chance whatever to avenge himself upon any one of them. He stood glowering, with wrath in his heart and scorn in his great, yellow, supercilious eyes, at the sweating firemen and the roaring, blazing mouth of the furnace beneath the boiler. The glare and the windy roar of the red flame, the loud pulsing of the wheel, the ceaseless vibration of the straining boat, all the inexplicable strangeness of the situation into which he had been so rudely thrust, filled him with uneasiness, indeed, but had no power to shake his defiant spirit.
The captain of the Forest Queen was a skilled river man, his intrepidity wisely tempered with discretion. But long immunity from accident had produced the usual effect. The ancient proverb of the pitcher that goes too often to the well is apt to justify itself at last. Confident in his boat and in his skill, absorbed in his determination to beat the river, he forgot how the drought had been drying up not only the river but the long-seasoned upper timber of the Forest Queen; he forgot the sparks which his over-driven furnace was vomiting from the funnel. One after another they caught, and clung, and gathered fresh vitality, and began to gnaw their way along the cracks in the parched timbers of the cabin roof. Thin, vicious red lines began to show themselves. A shift in the channel, a slight veering in the course of the boat, brought a draft along the cracks, and the furtive red lines leaped to life. Then, with startling suddenness, the whole after section of the cabin roof burst into flames.
Pandemonium broke loose. The shrill, tinthroated bell rang frantic signals. The hoarse steam whistle hooted and hooted. The one, inadequate length of fire hose—used for flushing the lower deck—was dragged aloft with shouts, and its puny stream spurted into the struggle. Brimming and splashing deck buckets were passed up the companion and emptied futilely at the mocking monster which seemed as if it had just swooped aboard out of space to overwhelm and devour its prey.
The battle was lost even before it was well begun. The old boat was as dry as a match box, and blazed riotously. The passengers in the cabin snatched up their belongings, flung themselves down the companion, and crowded forward as far as possible from the already scorching heat. The captain, seeing his boat was doomed, headed her about and ran her up as high as he could upon a long sandspit which jutted out from the shore a couple of hundred yards below. He would at least save something of the cargo.
The passengers, with their grips and bundles, jumped from the bows to dry land, ran up the slope, and stood to watch the conflagration. The crew began feverishly tumbling the freight overboard and dragging it up the sand. The goat, who was by this time beginning to get alarmed, stamped impatiently and gave utterance to a loud bleat. One of the deck hands, crying, "We ain't goin' to forgit you, Bill, you old b!" ran up, seized him by one horn, slipped the tether from his collar, dragged him to the side, and gave him a friendly kick on the rump to hasten his departure.
Bill sprang into the air, landed lightly on the sand whipped about like a flash, with lowered head, to avenge the insult to his dignity. But his rude rescuer was still on board, far out of his reach. Another of the deck hands, however, was close by, with his back to him, just stooping to lift a bale of blankets. The mark was irresistible. With a snort of indignation Bill launched himself, struck the unsuspecting man fair on the broad seat of his breeches, and sent him sprawling headlong into a pile of boxes. The man picked himself up with a volley of remarks which would make the printer's ink blush red, and glared around for some weapon with which to punish his assailant. But Bill, his honour satisfied, was already far up the sandspit, capering derisively. At the edge of the bushes which lined the bank he turned and stared for a few moments at the soaring and roaring flames which filled the river valley with wild light, at the wide water rippling gold and scarlet past the already half consumed wreck of his late prison, at the dense brown and orange clouds of smoke billowing away slowly on the light night airs, at the confusion and turmoil on the sandspit. He had never seen anything in the least like it before. He did not understand it. And it all annoyed him extremely. With a toss of the head he bounded through the screen of bushes, and made off, prancing and leaping freakishly, into the black shadows of the woods.
For the moment, Bill had but one idea in his head, which was to put the scene of his discomfitures and indignations as far behind him as possible. From the burning boat there was light enough for him to see his way pretty clearly. At this point the precipitous ridge which skirted the river was cleft by a steep, rocky, wooded valley leading up into the wild solitudes behind the ridge. A tiny thread of a stream, now gathering into still pools, now tinkling silverly over the ledges in thin films of cascades, meandered down to lose itself in the river just below the sandspit. Sure-footed and light of tread like all his tribe, and exulting in his freedom, Bill took by choice the most difficult portions of the always difficult path, leaping unerringly from rock to windfall, from ledge to slippery ledge, and balancing his great bulk of corded muscle as airily as a bird. As he ascended the way grew brighter, and the now shrinking fire once more came into view above the tree-tops behind him. Discontented at this, he hastened his flight; and soon, having traversed the saddle of the pass and lost the stream, he turned off sharply along a grassy glade, a half dried strip of swamp. A shoulder of the ridge behind him cut off all view or hint of the river valley, and he found himself swallowed up in the starlit, shadowy dark.
And now, at last, Bill began to feel the utter strangeness of his surroundings. The product of generations of civilization, he had few of the instincts of his wild ancestors left in his make-up, except for his proud independence and his impatience of restraint. He had no fear of the darkness—he had no apprehension that it might hide unknown perils. But an unwonted sense of loneliness began to oppress him, and his ebullience of spirits died down. Moving noisily hither and thither, he cropped the wild grasses, and browsed, with interested curiosity, on the leaves and twigs of such of the bushes as appealed to his investigating nose. Having made a satisfying meal he pushed under some overhanging leafage and lay down, looking out upon the starlit glimmer of the glade, and calmly, ignorantly, turning his back upon whatever menace might lurk in the blackness of the forest.
As soon as he was quiet the vast silence seemed to grip him. He had never before been aware of such silence absolute, and it presently began to arouse within him a deep-buried ancestral instinct of vigilance. His great yellow eyes rolled watchfully from side to side, though he knew not why, as he was conscious of no dread. His nostrils opened wide, questioning the novel scents of the forest air. His ears began to turn slowly backwards and forwards, straining to catch some hint of sound that would relieve the intolerable stillness.
For a long ten minutes or so there came no such relief; for all the small, furtive life of the forest had been stilled apprehensively by the intrusion of this noisy, mysterious-looking stranger. The rule of the wild was "When in doubt don't stir!" Then, in a little while, these creatures of short memory forgot their fears, forgot even the intruder's presence. The tiny feet of the woodmice once more scurried faintly among the dry spruce-needles; and a chorus of tiny squeaks proclaimed a disagreement over some captured moth or beetle. Bill's ears turned approvingly towards the sound, but his unpractised vision failed to make out the authors of it. The elusive noises stopped abruptly,—and a pair of small, sharply flaming eyes, set close together and near the ground, floated swiftly into view. They met Bill's wide-eyed, interested stare with savage defiance. Behind the eyes Bill presently made out the slim, lithe, snaky form of a weasel. Sensing the venomous hostility of the malevolent little prowler, he shook his horns and gave a loud snort of contempt. The weasel slipped away into the darkness as soundlessly as it had come, in search of a hunting-ground not pre-empted by this big mysterious stranger.
Not many moments later there came a light and muffled pitpat of leaping feet, and Bill saw three "snow-shoe" rabbits emerge into the glade. They sat up on their hind-quarters, ears erect, and stared about in every direction with their foolish bulging eyes. Then they fell to gambolling as light-heartedly as children, chasing and leaping over each other as if quite forgetful of the fact that life, for them, was one incessant game of dodging death. As he watched their play, Bill began to feel more at home. He had seen rabbits—tame rabbits—before, lots of them; and though he had always hitherto regarded this tribe with toplofty indifference, he now felt distinctly friendly to them. They called up pleasant memories and cheered the solitude. He even had a fleeting impulse to jump up and prance and gambol with them; but his instinct warned him that if he tried it they would take alarm and vanish. He did not want them to go, so he kept quite still.
Then a startling thing happened,—startling even to such unroutable self-possession as Bill's. From the blackness of an alder-thicket just opposite, a shadowy shape, almost as big as Bill himself, shot into the air, with a harsh sound which seemed to paralyze the little players for an instant. In that instant one of them was struck down by a broad, keen-taloned paw. Its dying scream seemed to release its two companions from their trance of terror, and they bounded off into the woods.
The slayer, a big Canada lynx, almost as long in the body as Bill himself, but much slighter in build, lifted his round, tuft-eared snarling face and stood, with one paw on his prey, glaring about him triumphantly with moon-pale, coldly savage eyes. But he crouched again instantly, laying back his tufted ears and baring his long white fangs, as he found himself looking into the large, inscrutable eyes of Bill, who had risen to his feet, gazing at him from beneath the branches.
Besides bitterly resenting the attack upon his little friends, the rabbits, Bill instinctively, on his own account, loathed the great lynx at sight. He had always had an antipathy to cats; and this, in his eyes, was just a gigantic and particularly objectionable cat.
For the fraction of a second the lynx stood his ground, ready to battle for his prey. Then the strangeness of the apparition, and of the manner of its attack, daunted him. He shrank back and sprang aside. But his delay had been a mistake. He was not quite quick enough. Bill's iron front caught him far back on the flank,—not, indeed, with full force, but with emphasis enough to send him sprawling. With a yowl of dismay he scrambled to his feet and fled ignominiously, the hairs on his stub of a tail standing out like a bottle-brush. Bears and wolves he knew; the antlered stag and moose-bull he understood; but Bill was a phenomenon he could not account for, and had no stomach to investigate.
Quite satisfied with his swift and easy victory, Bill had no thought of trying to follow it up. He stamped two or three times with his slim forehooves, as he stared after the enemy's flight, then he turned and sniffed inquiringly at the mangled rabbit. The smell of the fresh blood struck a kind of horror to his heart. He drew back, snorting and shaking his head. The place grew suddenly distasteful to him. Then, forgetting his dignity, he went bounding away down the glade, deeper and deeper into the forest, till the unpleasant impression faded away as his veins ran warm with the effort. At length, somewhat breathless, and weary from his crowded experiences, he snuggled down against the foot of a mossy boulder and went comfortably to sleep.
In the chill of a pink and silvery dawn he woke up, sprang to his feet, and gazed about him at the unfamiliar scene. Dew lay thick on the grass and moss and leaves. White wisps of mist coiled thinly in the narrow open glades. Down the dim corridors between the tree-trunks, it was still grey dusk; but the high tops of the light green birches and the dark green firs and hemlocks were touched with rosy light. He fell to browsing contentedly; and when his appetite was satisfied he pushed on, urged partly by the innate curiosity of his race, partly by a craving for some place that might give him the sense of home. The freedom and solitude of the wilderness were all very well in their way, but the need of something different was bred in his very bones.
As he went he cropped a mouthful here and there, following his incorrigible habit of sampling everything that was strange to him,—except toadstools. Of these he harboured an inherited suspicion. He would sniff at them, then stamp them to bits with every mark of hostility. Presently he noted the big grey papery globe of a wasps' nest, hanging from a branch just above his head. In that hour of numbing damp and chill not a wasp was stirring abroad. To Bill the nest looked like a ball of grey paper. Among other more or less edible things he rather liked paper. And he knew nothing about wasps. He reached up and took a good bite out of the conical bottom of the nest.
With a startled bleat of pain he spat out the fiery morsel, bucked about three feet into the air, and struck violently at his muzzle with one nimble forehoof. At the same moment half a dozen white-hot needle-points were jabbed into his nostrils. He heard, but gave no heed to, a sudden loud and vicious buzzing. Fortunately for him—the furious little "yellow-jackets" were too sluggish with the cold to be very active on their wings. Two or three more spasmodic leaps through the thick undergrowth bore him clear of their vengeance. But their scorching punishment he carried with him. For a few moments he rooted wildly in the damp moss. Then, bleating shrilly with rage and fear and torment, he went tearing through the wood till he chanced upon a little pool where the water bubbled up ice-cold from its source in the heart of the hills. Into this he plunged his tortured muzzle up to the eyes, and somewhat eased the anguish.
Bill's flesh was healthy, and his system strongly resistant to such poisons as those of insects or snakes; so in a comparatively short time he was little the worse except for a tenderness which led him to choose only the most delicate provender. Somewhat later in the day he caught sight of another of those harmless-looking pale grey papery globes, hanging from a branch. He was just beginning to recover his customary disdainful mood and bearing; but his self-confidence vanished like a pricked bubble and he fled in a panic, not pausing till he had put a mile or more between himself and the dreadful object.
This experience, though bitter, was worth the price, for it saved him, on the following day, from a yet more bitter and disastrous one. As he wandered on through green-and-brown forest aisles, following his vague quest, he was suddenly confronted by a clumsy-looking pepper-and-salt coloured animal, squat and lumpy in build, and about the size of a very large rabbit. The creature had a short black face with a blunt nose and little bad-tempered eyes. At the sight of Bill it paused, its fur suddenly stood up all over till it looked twice its proper size, and its colour changed to a dirty yellowish white with a blackish undertone. Then it came straight on, in its slow, heavy crawl, squeaking and gnashing its yellow teeth crossly, quite unimpressed by Bill's bulk and his imposing appearance. Had he been in his ordinary unchastened temper Bill would have resented this procedure at once. He would have promptly butted the presumptuous little stranger from his path. He would have got his face, his nose, his eyes, stuck full of deadly porcupine quills, so barbed as never to come out but to work their way steadily inwards. He would have gone staggering about in blind torment till death came mercifully to release him; and this chronicle of his adventures would have come to a melancholy end.
As it was, however, Bill was filled, at the moment, with a wholesome suspicion of what he did not understand. He certainly did not understand a creature which could grow to twice its size in the course of a second. He eyed it with curiosity, not unmingled with apprehension, till it was within two or three feet of him. Then he discreetly stepped aside. And the porcupine waddled slowly past, grunting and squeaking to itself, too indifferent, or too sluggish of wit, apparently, even to wonder what sort of being Bill might be. On the following evening, soon after sunset, Bill came out suddenly upon the bank of a small river, rippling and murmuring over its gravelly shoals. The wide sky was tender with a soft, violet light, and musical with the silver twang of the high-swooping night-hawks, hunting gnats in the quiet air above the tree-tops. Two or three early bats were already zigzagging erratically above the bright water, and the trout were leaping in the smoother reaches of the stream. To Bill this was a most comforting change from the gloom and stillness of the forest. The naked strip between the current and the bank,—now sand, now gravel, now naked, sun-warmed rock—was pleasant to his feet. He sauntered on hopefully downstream, browsing along the bushy edge of the bank as he went, till darkness had fallen and the sky grown thick with stars. Then he settled himself for the night on a patch of warm sand beneath the projecting roots of a half undermined maple, more content than he had been at any time since he had been so rudely dragged from his subservient flock and his old, familiar pasture.
The next morning about sunrise, while the mists were afloat upon the water, Bill rounded a leafy point and came upon a sight which thrilled his lonely heart deliciously. A slim young doe, light-limbed and stepping daintily, came down to the river's edge to drink. In colour she was of a delicate, ruddy fawn, with cream-white belly, and a clean white patch on her trim stern. Bill felt at once that there was some far-off kinship between her tribe and his; and however remote, he yearned to make the most of it. Holding his great head high, and approaching with delicate, mincing steps so as not to startle the fair stranger, he gave utterance to a harsh bleat, which he meant to be the very last word in caressing allurement. The doe jumped as she lifted her graceful head, and stood staring at Bill with wonder and question in her big dark, liquid eyes. She knew at once that he was not hostile; but he was an amazing apparition, and she was intensely curious. How ugly he seemed to her, with his coarse shaggy coat, long, bearded face, and stout horns sweeping back from his heavy brow! A puff of air brought his scent in her direction. Her fine muzzle wrinkled with distaste, and she sidled away a few paces. But her curiosity held her from flight.
His ardour stimulated by this coy withdrawal, Bill fell to curvetting and prancing, rearing on his hind legs, tossing his horns, showing off to the best of his powers as he drew nearer and nearer. He was careful not to be too hasty, though he was confident that his bold and virile charms could not fail of their effect. They were effective, indeed, but by no means as he fancied. Not thus was the slim doe desirous to be wooed. She stood her ground till he was within a dozen paces of her. Then, her curiosity quite satisfied, she whisked about on her dainty, pointed hooves, gave a disdainful flirt of her little tail, and went bounding away up the bank and over the bushes in prodigious leaps that carried her twenty-five feet at a time.
With a bleat of piteous appeal Bill raced after her. But not for long. In a few seconds she had vanished utterly. With downcast mien Bill dropped the vain pursuit and moved heavily back to the river. Sore at heart he sniffed for a while at her light footprints. Then he continued his journey downstream. As he went, his disappointment gave way to anger. He had been scorned and flouted shamefully. Not so would his lordly advances have been treated by his admiring little flock in the old home pasture. His wrath at last gave way to homesickness, and he felt very sorry for himself. When, some hours later, a big fox, crossing his path, paused to stare at him with lively interest, he thought it was a yellow dog and trotted forwards playfully, anticipating a rough-and-ready game of tag. Such games,—none too amiable, indeed, but with small hurt to either side,—he had often indulged in with the dogs of his native village. The fox, however, whisked off up the bank with a snarl and disappeared. Bill continued his journey morosely. In the wilderness nobody loved him. Was it possible that he had made a mistake in parting company with those impertinent but not unfriendly river men whom he had left beside the burning boat? For a moment he was tempted to turn back and look for them; but the impulse faded out as his attention was caught by the sudden shrill clamour of a squirrel showering abuse at him from a branch overhead. It was a familiar sound and he went on with more hope.
Late that evening it chanced that a vagabond Indian, poling his way up-river in his birch canoe from the far-off settlements, had landed, pulled up his light craft, and made camp just a few hundred yards below the spot where Bill, in a deep cleft in the bank, had settled himself for the night. This Indian, unlike most of the men of his shrewd breed, was rather a simple-minded rascal, shiftless and thieving, fuddled with drink when he could get it and always something of a butt both in his native village far upstream and in the settlements where he was wont to sell his baskets. It was strictly against the law to sell spirits to the Indians; but on this last visit "Poke," as he was called derisively, had found a dishonest trader, who had obligingly accepted all his basket money in return for a few bottles of fiery "Square Face."
Already mildly "oiled," though his task of poling against the stiff current had forced him to be moderate, Poke had now but one idea. This was to indulge himself, free from all distractions, in a blissful orgy of fire-water. The night was bland and clear. He had no need of a shelter. He did not trouble even to unload the canoe. Bringing ashore only his blanket, a hunk of bread, and two of his precious, square, black bottles of gin, he spread the blanket at the foot of a steep rock and hurriedly lighted his little camp-fire. Then, squatted beside the companionable blaze, with a grunt of luxurious anticipation he dug out the cork with his sheath-knife and took a generous draft of the raw liquor.
Alternately munching chunks of bread and drinking avidly from the black bottle, Poke was soon in a condition when the world seemed to him a glorious place. Cold, hunger, pain, toil, weariness were things which had never been and never more would be. Rocking himself slowly on his haunches and occasionally muttering quietly, he stared into the little fire, feeding it from time to time with dry sticks till his copper-coloured, foolishly grinning face glowed in the dancing of the flame.
Suddenly a sharp sound of footsteps on the gravel at the other side of the fire made him look up, stupidly enraged at the interruption. All he saw was Bill's great horned and bearded head, with the big yellow eyes aglare in the firelight, gazing at him fixedly from around the corner of the rock. Never before had he seen such a head, such awful blazing eyes. But he had dreamed of something like it, after listening to the priest's description of the hell that awaited evil-doers. His fuddled brain leaped to the conclusion that this was none other than the Devil himself, come to snatch him off to eternal torment. With a yell of horror he sprang to his feet, hurled the bottle—now quite empty—at the dreadful vision, thrust off and fell into his canoe, and went paddling frantically downstream. It was not the direction he wished to go in, but it was the quickest path of flight.
Bill, who had come with the most friendly intentions, seeking human company and hospitality, had jumped back into the shadows with a startled snort as the bottle crashed loudly on the rock beside his head. He came forth again at once, however, stared after the fugitive for a moment, and then stepped around to examine the little fire and the abandoned blanket. Finding a crust of the bread left, he joyously devoured it. He seized the blanket and tried to toss it in the air; but as he Was standing upon it with his forefeet it resisted him. This excited and amused him, and he proceeded to have some fun with it, enjoying himself immensely.
The frightened Poke, daring at last to glance back over his shoulder, was horrified to see a black horned shape, looking to him as big as a horse, dancing diabolically about the fire, and flapping an awful, dusky wing. In his panic he threw overboard his last bottle, and it was months before he would taste another drop, or steal so much as a potato.
Tiring at last of his antics with the blanket and cheered by a feeling that he had once more come in contact with humanity, Bill lay down beside the rock and gazed at the dying fire until he fell asleep.
It was early in the following afternoon when Bill came upon the first signs of human habitation in the wilderness. Forced by a deep and still bayou, or backwater, to turn his steps far inland, he traversed a low ridge clothed with beech-trees, and saw before him a pleasant valley, with the roofs of a log cabin and a low barn showing in the distance. There were several wide patches of roughly tilled clearing, with blackened, half-burned stumps sticking up through the crops of potato and buckwheat. Immediately before him was a very crude but substantial snake-fence of brushwood and poles, enclosing a rugged pasture. And in that pasture was a sight that rejoiced his soul.
Among the low green bushes and grey boulders five sheep were feeding—two white ones and three black. These latter, called black by courtesy, were rather of a rusty brown, with black head and legs. Bill was acquainted with sheep, and had always recognized them, condescendingly, as humbler and uninteresting kin to the aristocratic tribe of the goats. But all the sheep he had seen hitherto had been white ones, very fat, and woolly, and futile. These three brown ewes, leggy and nimble, reminded him of his own light-footed flock, and his heart went out to them. But his experiences in this strange land had taught him caution. He was afraid that unless he should make his advances gently, these altogether desirable creatures might vanish, as the doe had done, and leave him again to his loneliness.
The sheep were pasturing at some distance to his right near a corner of the fence which was fairly overhung by dense forest. He would go over and try talking to them nicely through the fence before thrusting his company upon them in his usual swaggering way. He was quick to learn, was Bill, and this time he was not taking any risks. He moved as quietly, now, through the underbrush as if he had been born to it.
Bill had almost reached the point he was aiming at, when an appalling thing happened. One of the brown ewes was lying down, peacefully ruminating, quite close to the fence, and with her back to it. Nothing was further from her simpie mind than any possible peril. Suddenly a great black shape seemed to drop over the fence just behind her and fall forward upon her. In the next instant, as she jumped to her feet with a terrified "baa-a-a," a mighty paw descended upon her and she sank down again, with her back broken. The shaggy bulk of her slaughterer almost hid her from view as his jaws fixed themselves greedily in her throat. The rest of the flock raced down the pasture with wild bleatings.
It required no previous knowledge of bears to inform Bill that this black monster would be a terrible, a deadly, antagonist. But his bold heart, almost bursting with rage, took no account of the odds. Already in his sight those ewes were his. With one magnificent bound, barely touching the top rail, he was over the fence. In the next he launched himself, head down. With all his weight and all his fury behind it, his iron front struck the bear in the most sensitive part of the flank, just behind the ribs.
With a gasping cough the bear, caught unprepared, rolled clear of his victim. He was dazed and breathless for a second; but before his amazing assailant could repeat the stroke he recovered himself. Crouched back on his haunches, his little furious eyes fixed upon the foe with the wariness of a trained boxer, he held one great iron-clawed paw uplifted in readiness for a blow that should settle the fight.
Bill was a crafty fighter as well as a daring one. He had danced back some paces, for room to gather momentum. He was just on the point of charging again when he grasped his adversary's tactics. He had seen what that mighty paw could do. He leaped to one side, and dashed in from another angle. But the bear whirled nimbly on his haunches to confront him again; and he swerved just in time to evade the pile-driver stroke. It was, in fact, a close shave.
And now Bill began a maneuvre which his great adversary found most annoying. He danced around the bear, thrusting and feinting, and ever circling, ever challenging; while the bear was kept turning, turning, turning on his haunches till fairly beside himself with rage. At last he made a lightning rush, hoping to end the matter. But his elusive foe was beyond reach in an instant, as swiftly and lightly as if blown by the wind of his rush. With a savage growl he sprang back to seize again the carcass of his victim. Just as he reached it, something like the fall of a hillside struck him full on the rump, and propelled him clean over it. He had made a mistake in turning his back on Bill, even for a second. There was nothing for him to do but crouch on his haunches again, and face once more his ever-mocking, ever-circling opponent.
The remaining ewes, meanwhile, somewhat recovered from their panic, were standing huddled together at a discreet distance, watching the battle with awe. It was plain, even to their somewhat limited perceptions, that the bearded and prancing stranger was their champion—a champion even so bold as to defy a bear. Strange as he was, their simple souls admired him.
At this juncture of affairs a loud and very angry shouting turned all eyes—even those of the bear and Bill—towards the other side of the field. A long-legged man in grey homespuns, bareheaded, and swinging an axe, came into view over the curve of the hill. He had been working in the field below the pasture, and had seen the sheep running wildly. As he raced with long strides over the hillocks, his appearance and his language struck panic to the heart of the bear. That sagacious beast knew Man. He had no wish to face a man alone, still less a man plus Bill. He made a wild dash for the fence. Just as he was going over it,—the top rail breaking under his weight,—Bill caught him again like a catapult, low down in the stern, between the thighs,—a devastating blow. With a squeal he went over, landing on his snout, and fled away through the thickets with no more dignity than a scared rabbit.
The tall man stopped beside the body of the ewe and stood leaning on his axe. He was indignant and sore at the destruction of his beast; but his sporting spirit was more interested in Bill.
"Some goat!" he remarked with admiring emphasis. "Some scrapper! Say, old son, I wish we'd had you with us over in France."
Bill, immensely pleased with himself, but also pleased with the man's voice, so obviously friendly, came prancing towards him, half expecting a carrot or a lump of sugar as a reward for his performance. Seeing that no titbit was forthcoming, he paused irresolutely.
"Shoo!" said the man. "Buzz off now, son, and join the ladies. See where they're waitin' for yeh over there. I'll see to this poor bit of mutton."
Bill's eyes and thoughts were already turning in that direction, and just as if he had understood the man's words, he trotted over to join the huddled ewes. Uneasy at his strange appearance, they shifted and shrank a little; but he approached so gently, so diffidently, that their fears were soon allayed. A moment more and he was among them, rubbing noses with each in turn. Having thus accepted his presence, the ewes placidly fell to pasturing again, as if nothing unusual had happened. But Bill, for a long while too happy to feed, kept moving about the flock, from time to time shaking his horns at the forest as if defying all its perils to trespass on his new kingdom.