Wild Folk

Barrack, a lonely coffin-shaped hill, where, in the deep woods on the top, lived old Rashe Howe and his wife, snowbound from Decembe

f our orchids. Then there were Lion's Head, and Rattlesnake Mountain, where that king of the dark places of the forest had a den. Beyond towered the Cobble, a steep cone-shaped hill, which, a century ago, Great-great Uncle

he west; and in the northwest was Gold Mountain, with its abandoned gold-mine, from which Deacon Wadsworth mined just enough gold to pay for sinking the shaft. Then came Blakesley Hill, c

t it was. Some claimed that it was an elm, like the vast Boundary Elm which marked a corner where four farms met. Others believed it to be a red oak; while still others claimed the honor for a button-ball. But no one yet has ever known for certain. In the very centre

p. Safe and warm in great white farmhouses, built to stand for centuries, human-folk stayed stormbound. In the morning, again at noon, and once more in the gray twilight, the men would plough their way through the drifts to the barns, and feed and water the patient oxen, the horses stamping in their stalls, the cows in stanchions, and the chickens, which stayed on their roosts all throu

cos with their white skirts and light beaks, tree-sparrows with red topknots and narrow white wing-bars, and flocks of redpolls down from the Arctic Circle, whose rosy breasts looked like peach-blossoms scattered upon the white snow. Hundreds of larger patterns showed where the mice-folk had feasted and frolicked all the long night through. Down under the snow, their tunnels ran in mazes and labyrinths, with openings at every weed-stalk up which they could climb in hurrying groups into the outsid

the smallest mammal in the world, a tiny, blind death, whose doom it is to devour its own weight in flesh and blood every twenty-four hours. Another track showed like a tunnel, with its concave surface stamped with zigzag paw-marks. It was the trail of

d two near-together. Overhead at night in the cold sky, below those star-jewels, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnita, which gleam in the belt of Orion, the sam

led in the lee of thick bushes, a fifth mark would appear. This was the print of the powder-puff that the rabbit wears for a tail, and showed where he had sat down to rest or meditate in the snow. Suddenly, the wide-apart marks appeared far in front of the other two. For some reason the rabbit had speeded up his pace, and with every spring his long hind legs had thrust themselves b

rail ended in a circle of trampled, ridged, and reddened snow. At the very edge of the blood-stains a great X was stamped deep. Farther on was the end of that snow-story-the torn, half-eaten body of the rabbit, which had run a losing race with death. Again, to him who could read the writing on the snow the record was a plain one. The X is t

n hoards in the lee of rocks and in hollow trees. Crossing and recrossing fields and forests in long straight lines were the trails of hunting foxes. The neat, clearly stamped prints, with never a mark of a dragging paw, and the fact that they did not spraddle out from a straight line, distinguished them from dog-tracks. Along the brooks were the four- and five-finge

phire-blue and pools of beryl-green, while above was a spindrift of flame the color of the terrible crystal. That night the mercury crept up higher and higher in the thermometer that hung outside of Silas Dean's store

f the unhasting skunk. "Don't hurry, others will," is his motto. It was just at dawn of the second day of the thaw that he appeared in the sunlight. All night long he had wandered slowly and sedately in and out of a circle not over two h

hairs, some of them so long that, when they floated out to their full extent, the width of that marvelous tail exceeded its length. At the very tip was a white tuft which could be erected. Wise wild folk, when they saw that tuft standing straight up, removed themselves elsewhere with exceeding rapidit

him, the skunk snapped first. His ancestors had learned the secret of the gas-attack a million years before the Boche. As the fox rushed upon him, the skunk twisted its tail to one side bringing into action two glands near the base of its tail which secrete a clear golden fluid filled with tiny floating bubbles of a devastating gas, against which

mells only faintly defines it. A fox, however, is by no means squeamish about smells. Many odors which are revolting and unbearable to human nostrils arouse only pleasurable sensations in a fox. What sent him rolling backwards over and over, and stiffened and contracted his throat-muscles in spasms, was the choking acrid gas itself. It strangled him just as the fumes of chlorine or ammonia gas will choke a man. Onl

s, tenements, and hereditaments, with all easements of ingress, egress, and regress. From thenceforth, to the skunk belonged the whole complicated system of tunnels and galleries. To him belonged the two public entrances and a third concealed from sight in a little thicket

at Chickaree, the irritable, explosive red squirrel, nibbling away at a long cylindrical object which he held tightly clasped in his forepaws. As the skunk passed underneath, the squirrel stopped to scold at him on general principles, and became so emphatic in his remarks that he lost his hold of what he had been eating, and it fell directly in front of the plodding skunk. It was only an icicle, b

a bomb, and out from the snow started a magnificent cock grouse. During the storm he had plunged into the drift for shelter, and the warmth of his body had melted a snug little room for him under the snow. There, safe and warm, he had feasted on the store

his kind. The skunk shed his slowness like a mask and, with the lightning-like pounce of the weasel family, caught the escaping bird just back of the ruff and snapped his neck asu

cording to skunk-standards that was a tremendous exhibition of rage, but the second skunk came on unmoved. Under the Skunk Geneva Convention, the use of aerial bombs or any form of gas-attack against skunk-kind is barred. In a battle between skunk and skunk the fighters must depend upon tooth and claw. Accordingly, when the stranger sniffed approvingly at the half-eaten bird, he was promptly nipped

TH

ther one of that battling pair. His was a purely sporting interest in the fight, until he happened to catch a glimpse of the partridge half-covered by the loose snow. On the instant, he nobly resolved to play the peacemaker and remove the cause of all the trouble. Step by step, he stole up closer to the fighters, all set to turn and run for

he fox, nearly as fast as if it had gone under its own wing-power. Instantly the skunk released his hold. His opponent did the same, and the two scrambled to their feet a

nk went back to bed. Rolled up in a round ball of fur, with his warm tail wrapped about him like a fleecy coverlet, he slept out the cold in the midmost ch

celain petals of the hepatica. In bare spots the crowded tiny white blossoms of the saxifrage showed in the withered grass, and the bloodroot, with its golden heart and snowy, short-lived petals, and gnarled root which drips blood when broken. A little later the hillsides were blue with violets, and yellow with adder's-tongue wi

look at color-values. This spring he was boarding with old Mark Hurlbutt, over on Cream Hill. On the day of the meeting, he had been sketching down by Cream Pond and had taken a wood-road home. Where it entered one of Mark's upper pastures, he saw a strange black-and-white animal moving leisurely toward him, and stood still lest he frighten it away. He might

in his coat. As he took a step forward, the stranger seemed for the first time to notice him. It stopped and stamped with its forepaws, in what seemed to the artist a playful and

six feet of the skunk, which had now come to a full stop and was watching him intently out of its deep-set eyes. As he approached still nearer, he noticed that the white tip of the tail, which heretofore had hung dangling, suddenly stiffened and

side, the skunk bent its back at the shoulders, and brought its secondary batteries into action. A puff of what seemed like vapor shot toward the unfortunate artist, and a second later he had an experience in atmospheric values which had never come into his sheltered life before. From the crown of his velour hat with the little plume at the side, down to his s

although it was half a mile away, old Mark Hu

ping on his way to the barn; "and an able-bodi

d his boarder. Even as he saw him, a certain aura which hung ab

' I'll shoot," he went on, aiming the shovel which he had in his hand

alted in h

uire assistanc

ls me so. Hustle over back of the smoke-house and

co shirt, and a pair of overalls. As he came around the corner, the sight of the artist posing all pink and white agains

one of them fauns you're all

right away, or I'll put these clothes on aga

ly grave back of Mark's smoke-house, where they remain even to this day. Thereafter the artist, scrubbed with benzine unt

Centre. "You're gettin' on, Mark," he continued solemnly. "If he'd a' stayed you might have got some kind of a stroke or other from ov

ou ain't done any since-nor before," he concluded,

ence was when a motherly old hen, who had been sitting contentedly on twelve eggs for nearly a week, wandered around and around her empty nest clucking disconsolately. During the night some sly thief

d boarder an' now he's ate up a full clutch of pedigree wh

ck-and-white stranger was contentedly drinking from a pan of milk that had been placed there to cool. As Mark opened the door, the skunk looked at him calmly, and then quietly raised the banner which had

that skunk at sight?" queried Jonas,

y, "he got the drop on me. If I'd shot I'd of lost on

ound some way to stop that skunk a-drinkin' up a whole pan

from me that skunk ain't no bluffer. If yo

ch, as usual, had been hidden by its mother somewhere in the thick woods. The path was sunken deep between banks covered with the yellow blossoms of the hardhack. At one spot, where the way widened into a rude road, a crooked green stem

e exhaust of a steam-pipe, and repeatedly struck out in her direction, the very embodiment of blind, venomous rage. Half paralyzed with fear, Miranda moved backward and began to wonder what she would do. Night was coming on, and if she went bac

he skunk's gait quickened, and it approached the threatening figure with cheerful alacrity. The snake puffed and hissed and struck, but the skunk never even hesitated. Holding the reptile down with its slim paws it nibbled

never was known to bite. From that day on the skunk was envisaged in her mind as the guardian angel of the farm, and the edict went out that on no account was it to

with bees an' boarders an' milk an' eggs, an' never s

s brave-an' good-look

ods. Even as he watched, a procession came down to meet him. At its head marched another full-grown skunk, while back of her was a long winding procession of little skunks. One, two, three, four, five, six-Jonas counted them up to ten, and the last one of all was jet-black except for a tiny stripe of white on its muzzle. There was a long pause