The Backwoodsmen

“Ye ain’t feelin’ quite so sassy now, be ye?” she muttered; and the sticks flew the faster from her energetic hands. Not many of them, to be sure, went at all in the direction she wished, but enough were dropping about the herring-tub to make the porcupines remember that they had business elsewhere. The one that had been struck had no longer any regard for his dignity, but made himself as small as possible and scurried off like a scared rat. The other, unvanquished but indignant, withdrew slowly, with every quill on end. The sticks fell all about him; but Mrs. Gammit, in the excitement of her triumph, was now forgetting herself so far as to take aim, therefore never a missile touched him. And presently, without haste, he disappeared behind the barn.

With something almost like admiration Mrs. Gammit eyed his departure.

“Well, seein’ as I hain’t scairt ye much,” she muttered dryly, “mebbe ye’ll obleege me by coming back an’ gittin’ into my trap. But ye ain’t agoin’ to hev no more o’ my good herrin’-tub, ye ain’t.” And she strode down the yard to get the tub. It was no longer a good tub, for the porcupines had gnawed two big holes in the sides, and Mrs. Gammit’s own missiles had broken in the bottom. But she obstinately bore the poor relics into the kitchen. Firewood they might become, but not food for the enemy.

No more that night was the good woman’s sleep disturbed, and she slept later than usual. As she was getting up, conscience-stricken at the sound of the cows in the pasture lowing to be milked, she heard a squawking and fluttering under the barn, and rushed out half dressed to see what was the matter. She had no doubt that one of the audacious porcupines had got himself into a trap.

But no, it was neither porcupine, fox, nor weasel. To her consternation, it was her old red top-knot hen, which now lay flat upon the trap, with outstretched wings, exhausted by its convulsive floppings. She picked it up, loosed the deadly grip upon its leg, and slammed the offending trap across the barn with such violence that it bounced up and fell into the swill-barrel. Her feelings thus a little relieved, she examined Red Top-knot’s leg with care. It was hopelessly shattered and mangled.

“Ye cain’t never scratch with that ag’in, ye cain’t!” muttered Mrs. Gammit, compassionately. “Poor dear, ther ain’t nawthin’ fer it but to make vittles of ye now! Too bad! Too bad! Ye was always sech a fine layer an’ a right smart setter!” And carrying the victim to the block on which she was wont to split kindling wood, she gently but firmly chopped her head off.

Half an hour later, as Mrs. Gammit returned from the pasture with a brimming pail of milk, again she heard a commotion under the barn. But she would not hurry, lest she should spill the milk. “Whatever it be, it’ll be there when I git there!” she muttered philosophically; and kept on to the cool cellar with her milk. But as soon as she had deposited the pail she turned and fairly ran in her eagerness. The speckled hen was cackling vain-gloriously; and as Mrs. Gammit passed the row of nests in the shed she saw a white egg shining. But she did not stop to secure it.

As she entered the barn, a little yellowish brown animal, with a sharp, triangular nose and savage eyes like drops of fire, ran at her with such fury that for an instant she drew back. Then, with a roar of indignation at its audacity, she rushed forward and kicked at it. The kick struck empty air; but the substantial dimensions of the foot seemed to daunt the daring little beast, and it slipped away like a darting flame beneath the sill of the barn. The next moment, as she stooped to look at the nearest of the two traps, another slim yellow creature, larger than the first, leaped up, with a vicious cry, and almost reached her face. But, fortunately for her, it was held fast by both hind legs in the trap, and fell back impotent.

Startled and enraged, Mrs. Gammit kicked at it, where it lay darting and twisting like a snake. Naturally, she missed it; but it did not miss her. With unerring aim it caught the toe of her heavy cowhide shoe, and fixed its teeth in the tough leather. Utterly taken by surprise, Mrs. Gammit tried to jump backwards. But instead of that, she fell flat on her back, with a yell. Her sturdy heels flew up in the air, while her petticoats flopped back in her face, bewildering her. The weasel, however, had maintained his dogged grip upon the toe of her shoe; so something had to give. That something was the cord which anchored the trap. It broke under the sudden strain. Trap and weasel together went flying over Mrs. Gammit’s prostrate head. They brought up with a stupefying slam against the wall of the pig-pen, making the pig squeal apprehensively.

Disconcerted and mortified, Mrs. Gammit scrambled to her feet, shook her petticoats into shape, and glanced about to see if the wilderness in general had observed her indiscretion. Apparently, nothing had noticed it. Then, with an air of relief, she glanced down at her vicious little antagonist. The weasel lay stunned, apparently dead. But she was not going to trust appearances. Picking trap and victim up together, on the end of a pitchfork, she carried them out and dropped them into the barrel of rain water at the corner of the house. Half-revived by the shock, the yellow body wriggled for a moment or two at the bottom of the barrel. As she watched it, a doubt passed through Mrs. Gammit’s mind. Could Joe Barron have been right? Was it weasels, after all, that were taking her eggs? But she dismissed the idea at once. Joe Barron didn’t know everything! And there, indisputably, were the porcupines, bothering her all the time, with unheard-of impudence. Weasels, indeed!

“’Twa’n’t you I was after,” she muttered obstinately, apostrophizing the now motionless form in the rain-barrel. “It was them dratted porkypines, as comes after my aigs. But ye’re a bad lot, too, an’ I’m right glad to have got ye where ye won’t be up to no mischief.”

All athrill with excitement, Mrs. Gammit hurried through her morning’s chores, and allowed herself no breakfast except half a dozen violent cups of tea “with sweetenin’.” Then, satisfied that the weasel in the rain-barrel was by this time securely and permanently dead, she fished it out, and reset the trap in its place under the barn. The other trap she discovered in the swill-barrel, after a long search. Relieved to find it unbroken, she cleaned it carefully and put it away to be returned, in due time, to its owner. She would not set it again–and, indeed, she would have liked to smash it to bits, as a sacrifice to the memory of poor Red Top-knot.

“I hain’t got no manner o’ use fer a porkypine trap what’ll go out o’ its way to ketch hens,” she grumbled.

The silent summer forenoon, after this, wore away without event. Mrs. Gammit, working in her garden behind the house, with the hot, sweet scent of the flowering buckwheat-field in her nostrils and the drowsy hum of bees in her ears, would throw down her hoe about once in every half-hour and run into the barn to look hopefully at the traps. But nothing came to disturb them. Neither did anything come to disturb the hens, who attended so well to business that at noon Mrs. Gammit had seven fresh eggs to carry in. When night came, and neither weasels nor porcupines had given any further sign of their existence, Mrs. Gammit was puzzled. She was one of those impetuous women who expect everything to happen all at once. When milking was over, and her solitary, congenial supper, she sat down on the kitchen doorstep and considered the situation very carefully.

What she had set herself out to do, after the interview with Joe Barron, was to catch a porcupine in one of his traps, and thus, according to her peculiar method of reasoning, convince the confident woodsman that porcupines did eat eggs! As for the episode of the weasel, she resolved that she would not say anything to him about it, lest he should twist it into a confirmation of his own views. As for those seven eggs, so happily spared to her, she argued that the capture of the weasel, with all its attendant excitement, had served as a warning to the porcupines and put them on their guard. Well, she would give them something else to think about. She was now all impatience, and felt unwilling to await the developments of the morrow, which, after all, might refuse to develop! With a sudden resolution she arose, fetched the gnawed and battered remains of the herring-tub from their concealment behind the kitchen door, and propped them up against the side of the house, directly beneath her bedroom window.

At first her purpose in this was not quite clear to herself. But the memory of her triumph of the previous night was tingling in her veins, and she only knew she wanted to lure the porcupines back, that she might do something to them. And first, being a woman, that something occurred to her in connexion with hot water. How conclusive it would be to wait till the porcupines were absorbed in their consumption of the herring-tub, and then pour scalding water down upon them. After all, it was more important that she should vanquish her enemies than prove to a mere man that they really were her enemies. What did she care, anyway, what that Joe Barron thought? Then, once more, a doubt assailed her. What if he were right? Not that she would admit it, for one moment. But just supposing! Was she going to pour hot water on those porcupines, and scald all the bristles off their backs, if they really didn’t come after her eggs? Mrs. Gammit was essentially just and kind-hearted, and she came to the conclusion that the scheme might be too cruel.

“Ef it be you uns as takes the aigs,” she murmured thoughtfully, “a kittle o’ bilin’ water to yer backs ain’t none too bad fer ye! But ef it be only my old herrin’-tub ye’re after, then bilin’ water’s too ha’sh!”

In the end, the weapon she decided upon was the big tin pepper-pot, well loaded.

Through the twilight, while the yard was all in shadow, Mrs. Gammit sat patient and motionless beside her open window. The moon rose, seeming to climb with effort out of the tangle of far-off treetops. The faint, rhythmic breathing of the wilderness, which, to the sensitive ear, never ceases even in the most profound calm, took on the night change, the whisper of mystery, the furtive suggestion of menace which the daylight lacks. Sitting there in ambush, Mrs. Gammit felt it all, and her eager face grew still and pale and solemn like a statue’s. The moonlight crept down the roofs of the barn and shed and house, then down the walls, till only the ground was in shadow. And at last, through this lower stratum of obscurity, Mrs. Gammit saw two squat, sturdy shapes approaching leisurely from behind the barn.

She held her breath. Yes, it was undoubtedly the porcupines. Undaunted by the memory of their previous discomfiture, they came straight across the yard, and up to the house, and fell at once to their feasting on the herring-tub. The noise of their enthusiastic gnawing echoed strangely across the attentive air.

Very gently, with almost imperceptible motion, Mrs. Gammit slid her right hand, armed with the pepper-pot, over the edge of the window-sill. The porcupines, enraptured with the flavour of the herring-tub, never looked up. Mrs. Gammit was just about to turn the pepper-pot over, when she saw a third dim shape approaching, and stayed her hand. It was bigger than a porcupine. She kept very still, breathing noiselessly through parted lips. Then the moonlight reached the ground, the shadows vanished, and she saw a big wildcat stealing up to find out what the porcupines were eating.

Seeing the feasters so confident and noisy, yet undisturbed, the usually cautious wildcat seemed to think there could be no danger near. Had Mrs. Gammit stirred a muscle, he would have marked her; but in her movelessness her head and hand passed for some harmless natural phenomenon. The wildcat crept softly up, and as he drew near, the porcupines raised their quills threateningly, till nothing could be seen of their bodies but their blunt snouts still busy on the herring-tub. At a distance of about six feet the big cat stopped, and crouched, glaring with wide, pale eyes, and sniffing eagerly. Mrs. Gammit was amazed that the porcupines did not at once discharge a volley at him and fill him full of quills for his intrusion.

The wildcat knew too much about porcupines to dream of attacking them. It was what they were eating that interested him. They seemed to enjoy it so much. He crept a few inches nearer, and caught a whiff of the herring-tub. Yes, it was certainly fish. A true cat, he doted on fish, even salt fish. He made another cautious advance, hoping that the porcupines might retire discreetly. But instead of that they merely stopped gnawing, put their noses between their forelegs, squatted flat, and presented an unbroken array of needle points to his dangerous approach.

The big cat stopped, quite baffled, his little short tail, not more than three inches long, twitching with anger. He could not see that the tub was empty; but he could smell it, and he drew in his breath with noisy sniffling. It filled him with rage to be so baffled; for he knew it would be fatal to go any nearer, and so expose himself to a deadly slap from the armed tails of the porcupines.

Just what he would have attempted, however, in his eagerness, will never be known. For at this point, Mrs. Gammit’s impatience overcame her curiosity. With a gentle motion of her wrist she turned the pepper-pot over, and softly shook it. The eyes of the wildcat were fixed upon that wonderful, unattainable herring-tub, and he saw nothing else. But Mrs. Gammit in the vivid moonlight saw a fine cloud of pepper sinking downwards slowly on the moveless air.

Suddenly the wildcat pawed at his nose, drew back, and grew rigid with what seemed an effort to restrain some deep emotion. The next moment he gave vent to a loud, convulsive sneeze, and began to spit savagely. He appeared to be not only very angry, but surprised as well. When he fell to clawing frantically at his eyes and nose with both paws, Mrs. Gammit almost strangled with the effort to keep from laughing. But she held herself in, and continued to shake down the pungent shower. A moment more, and the wildcat, after an explosion of sneezes which almost made him stand on his head, gave utterance to a yowl of consternation, and turned to flee. As he bounded across the yard he evidently did not see just where he was going, for he ran head first into the wheelbarrow, which straightway upset and kicked him. For an instant he clawed at it wildly, mistaking it for a living assailant. Then he recovered his wits a little, and scurried away across the pasture, sneezing and spitting as he went.

Meanwhile the porcupines, with their noses to the ground and their eyes covered, had been escaping the insidious attack of the pepper. But at last it reached them. Mrs. Gammit saw a curious shiver pass over the array of quills.

Now it was contrary to all the most rigid laws of the porcupine kind to uncoil themselves in the face of danger. At the same time, it was impossible to sneeze in so constrained an attitude. Their effort was heroic, but self-control at last gave way. As it were with a snap, one of the globes of quills straightened itself out, and sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. Then the other went through the same spasmodic process, while Mrs. Gammit, leaning halfway out of the window, squealed and choked with delight. But the porcupines were obstinate, and would not run away. Very slowly they turned and retired down the yard, halting every few feet to sneeze. With tears streaming down her cheeks Mrs. Gammit watched their retreat, till suddenly some of the vagrant pepper was wafted back to her own nostrils, and she herself was shaken with a mighty sneeze. This checked her mirth on the instant. Her face grew grave, and drawing back with a mortified air she slammed the window down.

“Might ’a’ knowed I’d be aketchin’ cold,” she muttered, “settin’ in a draught this time o’ night.”

Not until she had thoroughly mastered the tickling in her nostrils did she glance forth again. Then the porcupines were gone, and not even an echo of their far-off sneezes reached her ears.

In the days that followed, neither weasel, wildcat, nor porcupine came to Mrs. Gammit’s clearing, and the daily harvest of strictly fresh eggs was unfailing. At the end of a week, the good lady felt justified in returning the traps to Joe Barron, and letting him know how mistaken he had been.

“There, Mr. Barron,” said she, handing him the three traps, “I’m obleeged to you, an’ there’s yer traps. But there’s one of ’em ain’t no good.”

“Which one be it?” asked the woodsman as he took them.

“I’ve marked it with a bit of string,” replied Mrs. Gammit.

“What’s the matter with it? I don’t see nawthin’ wrong with it!” said Barron, examining it critically.

“Tain’t no good! You take my word fer it! That’s all I’ve got to say!” persisted Mrs. Gammit.

“Oh, well, seem’ as it’s you sez so, Mrs. Gammit, that’s enough,” agreed the woodsman, civilly. “But the other is all right, eh? What did they ketch?”

“Well, they ketched a big weasel!” said Mrs. Gammit, eyeing him with challenge.

A broad smile went over Barron’s face.

“I knowed it,” he exclaimed. “I knowed as how it was a weasel.”

“An’ I knowed as how ye’d say jest them very words,” retorted Mrs. Gammit. “But ye don’t know everythin’, Joe Barron. It wa’n’t no weasel as was takin’ them there aigs!”

“What were it then?” demanded the woodsman, incredulously.

“It was two big porkypines an’ a monstrous big wildcat,” answered Mrs. Gammit in triumph.

“Did ye ketch ’em at it?” asked the woodsman, with a faint note of sarcasm in his voice. But the sarcasm glanced off Mrs. Gammit’s armour. She regarded the question as a quite legitimate one.

“No, I kain’t say as I did, exackly,” she replied. “But they come anosin’ round, an’ to teach ’em a lesson to keep ther noses out o’ other people’s hens’ nests I shook a little pepper over ’em. I tell ye, they took to the woods, asneezin’ that bad I thought ye might ’a’ heard ’em all the way over here. Ye’d ’ave bust yerself laffin’, ef ye could ’a’ seed ’em rootin’. An’ since then, Mr. Barron, I git all the aigs I want. Don’t ye talk to me o’ weasels– the skinny little rats. They ain’t wuth noticin’, no more’n a chipmunk.”

The Battle in the Mist

In the silver-grey between dawn and sunrise the river was filled with mist from bank to bank. It coiled and writhed and rolled, here thinning, there thickening, as if breathed upon irregularly by innumerable unseen mouths. But there was no wind astir; and the brown-black, glistening current beneath the white folds was glassy smooth save where the occasional big swirls boiled up with a swishing gurgle, or the running wave broke musically around an upthrust shoulder of rock or a weedy snag. The river was not wide–not more than fifty yards from bank to bank; but from the birch canoe slipping quietly down along one shore, just outside the fringe of alder branches, the opposite shore was absolutely hidden. There was nothing to indicate that an opposite shore existed, save that now and again the dark top of a soaring pine or elm would show dimly for a moment, seeming to float above the ghostly gulfs of mist.

The canoe kept close along the shore for guidance, as one feels one’s way along a wall in the dark. The channel, moreover, was deep and clear in shore; while out under the mist the soft noises of ripples proclaimed to the ears of the two canoeists the presence of frequent rock and snag and shallow. Lest they should run upon unseen dangers ahead, the canoeists were travelling very slowly, the bow-man resting with his paddle across the gunwales before him, while the stern-man, his paddle noiselessly waving like the fin of a trout, did no more than keep his craft to her course and let her run with the current.

Down along the shore, keeping just behind the canoe and close to the water’s edge, followed a small, dark, sinuous creature, its piercing eyes, bead-black with a glint of red behind them, fixed in savage curiosity upon the canoemen. It was about two feet in length, with extremely short legs, and a sharp, triangular head. As it ran–and its movements were as soundless and effortless as those of a snake–it humped its long, lithe body in a way that suggested a snake’s coils. It seemed to be following the canoe out of sheer curiosity–a curiosity, however, which was probably well mixed with malevolence, seeing that it was the curiosity of a mink. These two strange creatures moving on the water were, of course, too large and formidable for the big mink to dream of attacking them; but he could wonder at them and hate them–and who could say that some chance to do them a hurt might not arise? Stealthy, wary, and bold, he kept his distance about eight or ten feet from the canoe; and because he was behind he imagined himself unseen. As a matter of fact, however, the steersman of the canoe, wiser in woodcraft and cunninger even than he, had detected him and was watching him with interest from the corner of his eye. So large a mink, and one so daring in curiosity, was a phenomenon to be watched and studied with care. The canoeist did not take his comrade in the bow into his confidence for some minutes, lest the sound of the human voice should daunt the animal. But presently, in a monotonous, rhythmic murmur which carried no alarm to the mink’s ear but only heightened its interest, he called the situation to his companion’s notice; and the latter, without seeming to see, kept watch through half-closed lids.

A little way down the shore, close to the water’s edge, something round and white caught the mink’s eye. Against the soft browns and dark greys of the wet soil, the object fairly shone in its whiteness, and seemed absurdly out of place. It was a hen’s egg, either dropped there by a careless hen from the pioneer’s cabin near by, or left by a musk-rat disturbed in his poaching. However it had got there, it was an egg; and the canoeists saw that they no longer held the mink’s undivided attention. Gently the steersman sheered out a few feet farther from the bank, and at the same time checked the canoe’s headway. He wanted to see how the mink would manipulate the egg when he got to it.