The Keeper Of The Water-Gate

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Title:     The Keeper Of The Water-Gate
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

Some distance below the ice, through the clear, dark water of the quiet-running stream, a dim form went swimming swiftly. It was a sturdy, broad-headed, thick-furred form, a little more than a foot in length, with a naked, flattened tail almost as long as the body. It held its small, handlike forepaws tucked up under its chin, and swam with quick strokes of its strong hind legs and eel-like wrigglings of the muscular tail. It would have seemed like no more than a darker, swiftly-moving shadow in the dark water, save for a curious burden of air-bubbles which went with it. Its close under-fur, which the water could not penetrate, was thickly sprinkled with longer hairs, which the water seemed, as it were, to plaster down; and under these long hairs the air was caught in little silvery bubbles, which made the swimmer conspicuous even under two inches of clear ice and eighteen inches of running water.

As he went, the swimmer slanted downward and aimed for a round hole at the bottom of the bank. This hole was the water-gate of his winter citadel; and he, the keeper of it, was the biggest and pluckiest muskrat on the whole slow-winding length of Bitter Creek.

At this point Bitter Creek was about four feet deep and ten or twelve feet wide, with low, bushy shores subject to overflow at the slightest freshet. Winter, setting in suddenly with fierce frost, had caught it while its sluggish waters were still so high from the late autumn rains that the bushes and border grasses were all awash. Now the young ice, transparent and elastic, held them in firm fetters. The flat world of field and wood about Bitter Creek was frozen as hard as iron, and a biting gale, which carried a thin drift of dry, gritty snow, was lashing it pitilessly. The branches snapped and creaked under the cruel assault, and not a bird or beast was so hardy as to show its head abroad. But in the muskrat's world, there under the safe ice, all was as tranquil as a May morning. The long green and brown water-weeds swayed softly in the faint current, with here and there a silvery young chub or an olive-brown sucker feeding lazily among them. Under the projecting roots lurked water-snails, and small, black, scurrying beetles, and big-eyed, horn-jawed larvae which would change next spring to aerial forms of radiance. And not one of them, muskrat, chub, or larva, cared one whit for the scourge of winter on the bleak world above the ice.

The big muskrat swam straight to the mouth of the hole, and plunged half-way into it. Then he suddenly changed his mind. Backing out abruptly, he darted up to the surface close under the edge of the bank. Along the edge of the bank the ice-roof slanted upward, the water having fallen several inches since the ice had set. This left a covered air space, about two inches in height, all along the fringes of the grass roots; and here the muskrat paused, head and shoulders half out of water, to take breath. He was panting heavily, having come a long way under water without stopping to empty and refill his long-suffering little lungs. Two inches over his head, on the other side of the ice, the thin, hard snow went driving and swirling, and he could hear the alders straining under the bitter wind. His little, bead-bright eyes, set deep in his furry face, gleamed with satisfaction over his comfortable security.

Having fully eased his lungs, the muskrat dived again to the bottom, and began to gnaw with fierce energy at a snaky mass of the roots of the yellow material. Having cut off a section about as long as himself, and more than an inch in thickness, he tugged at it fiercely to loosen the fibres which held it to the bottom. But this particular piece was more firmly anchored than he had expected to find it, and presently, feeling as if his lungs would burst, he was obliged to ascend to the air-space under the ice for a new breath. There he puffed and panted for perhaps a minute. But he had no thought of relinquishing that piece of succulent, crisp, white-hearted lily-root. As soon as he had rested, he swam down again, and gripping it savagely tore it loose at the first pull. Holding the prize lengthwise that it might not obstruct his entrance, he plunged into the hole in the bank, the round, black water-gate to his winter house.

The house was a most comfortable and strictly utilitarian structure. The entrance, dug with great and persistent toil from the very bottom of the bank, for the better discouragement of the muskrat's deadliest enemy, the mink, ran inward for nearly two feet, and then upward on a long slant some five or six feet through the natural soil. At this point the shore was dry land at the average level of the water; and over this exit, which was dry at the time of the building, the muskrat had raised his house.

The house was a seemingly careless, roughly rounded heap of grass-roots, long water-weeds, lily-roots and stems, and mud, with a few sticks woven into the foundation. The site was cunningly chosen, so that the roots and stems of a large alder gave it secure anchorage; and the whole structure, for all its apparent looseness, was so well compacted as to be secure against the sweep of the spring freshets. About six feet in diameter at the base, it rose about the same distance from the foundation, a rude, sedge-thatched dome, of which something more than three feet now showed itself above the ice.

To the unobservant eye the muskrat house in the alders might have looked like a mass of drift in which the rank water-grass had taken root. But within the clumsy pile, about a foot below the centre of the dome, was a shapely, small, warm chamber, lined with the softest grasses. From one side of this chamber the burrow slanted down to another and much larger chamber, the floor of which, at the present high level of the water, was partly flooded. From this chamber led downward two burrows,--one, the main passage, by which the muskrat had entered, opening frankly, as we have seen, in the channel of the creek, and the other, longer and more devious, terminating in a narrow and cunningly concealed exit, behind a deeply submerged willow-root. This passage was little used, and was intended chiefly as a way of escape in case of an extreme emergency,--such as, for example, the invasion of a particularly enterprising mink by way of the main water-gate. The muskrat is no match for the snake-swift, bloodthirsty mink, except in the one accomplishment of holding his breath under water. And a mink must be very ravenous, or quite mad with the blood-lust, to dare the deep water-gate and the long subaqueous passage to the muskrat's citadel, at seasons of average high water. In time of drought, however, when the entrance is nearly uncovered and the water goes but a little way up the dark tunnels, the mink will often glide in, slaughter the garrison, and occupy the well-built citadel.

The big muskrat, dragging his lily-root, mounted the narrow, black, water-filled passage till he reached the first chamber. Here he was met by his mate, just descending from the upper room. She promptly appropriated the piece of lily-root, which the big muskrat meekly gave up. He had fed full before coming, and now had no care except to clean his draggled fur and make his toilet before mounting to the little dry top chamber and curling himself up for a nap.

This toilet was as elaborate and painstaking as that of the cleanliest of cats or squirrels. He was so loose-jointed, so loose-skinned, so flexibly built in every way, that he could reach every part of his fur with his teeth and claws at once. He would seem to pull great folds of skin from his back around under his breast, where he could comb it the more thoroughly. It was no trouble at all for him to scratch his left ear with his right hind foot. He went about his task with such zeal that in a very few minutes his fur was as fluffy and exquisite as that of a boudoir kitten. Then he rubbed his face, eyes, and ears vigorously with both forepaws at once in a half-childish fashion, sitting up on his hind-quarters as he did so. This done, he flicked his tail sharply two or three times, touched his mate lightly with his nose, and scurried up to the little sleeping-chamber. Something less than a foot above his head the winter gale howled, ripped the snow-flurries, lashed the bushes, sent the snapped twigs hurtling through the bare branches, turned every naked sod to stone. But to the sleeping muskrat all the outside sound and fury came but as a murmur of Jun trees.

His mate, meanwhile, was gobbling the lily-root as if she had not eaten for a week. Sitting up like a squirrel, and clutching the end of the root with both little forepaws, she crushed the white esculent into her mouth and gnawed at it ravenously with the keen chisels of her teeth. The root was as long as herself, and its weight perhaps a sixth of her own. Yet when it was all eaten she wanted more. There were other pieces stored in the chamber; and indeed the whole house itself was in great part edible, being built largely of such roots and grasses as the muskrat loves to feed on. But such stores were for emergency use. She could forage for herself at present. Diving down the main passage she presently issued from the water-gate, and immediately rose to the clear-roofed air-space. Here she nibbled tentatively at some stems and withered leafage. These proving little to her taste, she suddenly remembered a clam-bed not far off, and instantly set out for it. She swam briskly down-stream along the air-space, her eyes and nose just out of the water, the ice gleaming silvery above her head.

She had travelled in this position perhaps fifty yards when she saw, some twelve or fifteen feet ahead of her, a lithe, dark, slender figure with a sharp-nosed, triangular head, squeeze itself over a projecting root which almost touched the ice. The stranger was no larger than herself,--but she knew it was not for her to try conclusions with even the smallest of minks. Catching a good lungful of air, she dived on the instant, down, down, to the very bed of the creek, and out to mid-channel.

The mink, eagerly desirous of a meal of muskrat-meat, dived also, heading outward to interrupt the fugitive. He swam as well as the muskrat,--perhaps faster, indeed, with a darting, eel-like, deadly swiftness. But the stream at this point had widened to a breadth of twelve or fifteen yards,--and this was the little muskrat's salvation. The mink was afraid to follow her to such a distance from the air-space. He knew that by the time he overtook her, and fixed his teeth in her throat, he would be fairly winded; and then, with no breathing-hole at hand, he would die terribly, bumping up against the clear ice and staring madly through at the free air for which his lungs were agonizing. His fierce heart failed him, and he turned back to the air-space under the bank. But the sight of the muskrat had whetted his appetite, and when he came to the muskrat house in the alders, he swam down and thrust his head inside the water-gate. He even, indeed, went half-way in; but soon instinct, or experience, or remembered instruction, told him that the distance to the air-chamber was too great for him. He had no more fancy to be drowned in the muskrat's winding black tunnel, than under the clear daylight of the ice; so he turned away, and with red, angry eyes resumed his journey up-stream.

The little muskrat, seeing that her enemy was disheartened, went on cheerfully to the clam-bed. Here she clawed up from the oozy bottom and devoured almost enough clams to make a meal for a full-grown man. But she took longer over her meal than the man would, thereby saving herself from an otherwise imminent indigestion. Each bivalve, as she got it, she would carry up to the air-space among the stones, selecting a tussock of grass on which she could rest half out of the water. And every time, before devouring her prize, she would carefully, though somewhat impatiently, cleanse her face of the mud and dead leafage which seemed to be an inseparable concomitant of her digging. When she had eaten as many clams as she could stuff into her little body, she hastened back to join her mate in the safe nest over the water-gate.

In the upper world the winter was a severe one, but of all its bitterness the muskrats knew nothing, save by the growing thickness of the ice that sheltered them. As Bitter Creek shrank to normal, winter level, and the strong ice sank in mid-channel, the air-space along shore increased till they had a spacious, covered corridor in which to disport themselves. Food was all about them--an unlimited abundance of lily-roots and clams; and once in awhile their diet was varied by the capture of a half-torpid sucker or chub. There were no otters in Bitter Creek; and the mink, which had investigated their water-gate so hungrily, got caught in a trap at an open spring up-stream, where he was accustomed to fish for eels. So the muskrats had no dangerous enemies to mar their peace.

The spring thaws came suddenly, while the ice was yet strong, and the flood went wide over the low banks of Bitter Creek. But the little house among the alders withstood them sturdily. The water rose till it filled the lower chamber. Inch by inch it crept up the last passage, till it glistened dimly just an inch below the threshold. But it never actually touched that threshold; and the little grass-lined retreat stayed warm and dry. Then the ice went out, under the sun and showers of late April, and the waters sank away as rapidly as they had risen; and the muskrats, wild with the intoxication of spring, rolled, played, and swam gaily hither and thither on the surface of the open creek. They made long excursions up and down-stream for the sheer delight of wandering, and found fresh interest in every clam-flat, lily cove, or sprouting bed of sweet-flag. Their appetites they had always with them; and though it was fun to chase each other, or to roll and wallow luxuriously on the cool surface of the water when the sun shone warm, there was nothing quite so worth while, day in and day out, as eating. Other muskrats now appeared, the wander-spirit seizing them all at once; and the males had many fierce fights, which left their naked tails scarred and bleeding. But the big muskrat, from the house in the alders, was denied the joy of battle, because none of his rivals were so hardy as to confront him.

About this pleasant season, in the upper chamber over the water-gate, was born a family of nine very small and very naked young muskrats. Their big father was amiably indifferent to them, and spent most of his time, when at home, in the lower chamber, which was now dry and clean enough for his luxurious tastes. Their small mother, however, was assiduous in her care; and in an exceedingly short time the youngsters, very sleek and dark in their first fur, were investigating the wonderful, great world beyond their water-gate. They had prodigious appetites, and they grew prodigiously. One, on their very first outing, got snapped up by a greedy black duck. The attention of the little mother was just then occupied, and, never having learned to count up to nine, she, apparently, never realized her loss; but she was destined to avenge it, a week or two later, by eating two new-hatched ducklings of that same black duck's brood. Another of the little muskrats encountered fate on the threshold of his existence, being snatched by the hungry jaws of a large pickerel, which darted upon him like lightning from under the covert of a lily-pad. But in this case, vengeance was instant and direct. The big muskrat chanced to be near by. He caught the pickerel, while the latter was preoccupied with his meal, bit clean through the back of his neck, and then and there devoured nearly half of him. In the engrossing task of cleaning his fur after this feast, and making his toilet, which he did with minute nicety on a stranded log by the shore, he promptly forgot the loss to his little family, the wrong which he had so satisfactorily and appropriately avenged. As for the remaining seven, they proceeded to grow up as rapidly as possible, and soon ceased to stand in any danger of pickerel or mallard.

Though fairly omnivorous in his tastes, the big muskrat, like all his tribe, was so content with his lilies, flag-root, and clams, that he was not generally regarded as a foe by the birds and other small people of the wilderness. He was too well fed to be a keen hunter.

Having learned (and taught his fellows) to avoid muskrat-traps, the big muskrat enjoyed his lazy summer life on Bitter Creek with a care-free spirit that is permitted to few, indeed, of the furtive kindred of the wild. There was no mink, as we have seen, to beware of; and as for hawks, he ignored them as none of the other small wild creatures--squirrels, hares, or even the fierce and fearless weasel--could afford to do. The hawks knew certain inconvenient capacities of his kind. When, therefore, that sudden alarm would ring clamorous over the still, brown woods, that shrill outcry of the crows, jays, and king-birds, which sends every weak thing trembling to cover, the big muskrat would sit up, untroubled, on his log, and go on munching his flag-root with as fine an unconcern as if he had been a bear or a bull moose.

But one day, one late, rose-amber afternoon, when the gnats were dancing over the glassy creek, he was startled out of this confidence. He was standing in shallow water, digging out an obstinate, but tempting root, when there arose a sudden great outcry from all the birds. It meant "A hawk!--A hawk!--A hawk!--A hawk!" He understood it perfectly; but he never lifted his head from his task. Next moment there was a mighty rush of wind in his ears; a thunderbolt seemed to strike him, frightful claws gripped him, piercing his back, and he was swept into the air. But it was a young hawk, unversed in the way of the muskrat, which had seized him. What those steely claws really clutched was little more than a roll of loose skin. Hurt, but not daunted, the muskrat twisted his head up and back, and sank his long, punishing incisors into the enemy's thigh. He did not hang on, in bulldog fashion, but cut, cut, cut, deep through the bird's hard feather armour, and into the cringing red strata of veins and muscles. With a scream of pain and fear, the bird dropped him, and he fell into the water. At first, he dived deep, fearing a second attack, and came up under a tangle of grasses, from which he could peer forth unseen. Then, perceiving that the hawk had vanished, he, by and by, came out of the grass, and paddled to his favourite log. He was bleeding profusely, and his toilet that evening was long and painful. But in a few days he was as well as ever, with an added confidence.

About this time, however, a small, inquisitive, and particularly bloodthirsty mink came down from the upper waters of the creek, where game had grown scarce under the ravages of her insatiable and implacable family. One of her special weaknesses was for muskrat-meat, and many a muskrat house she had invaded so successfully that the long, smothering, black, drowned galleries had no more terrors for her.

She came to the house in the alders. She noted its size, and realized that here, indeed, was good hunting. She swam down to the water-gate at the bottom of the channel, poked her nose in, and returned to the surface for a full supply of air. Then, with great speed, she dived again, and disappeared within the blackness of the water-gate.

It chanced that the big muskrat was just descending. From the inner darkness he saw the enemy clearly, before her savage, little, peering eyes could discover him. He knew all the deadliness of the peril. He could easily have escaped, turning back and fleeing by the other passage while the foe went on to her bloody work in the chambers. There was no time to warn the rest.

But flight was far from the big muskrat's mind in that crucial moment. Not panic, but a fierce hate blazed in his usually good-natured eyes. With a swift, strenuous kick of his powerful hind legs, he shot downward upon the enemy, and grappled with her in the narrow tunnel.

The mink had seen him just before he fell upon her, and quicker than thought itself had darted up her snake-like jaws to gain the fatal throat-hold. But long success had made her over-confident. No muskrat had ever, within her experience, even tried to fight her. This present impetuous attack she mistook for a frantic effort to crowd past her and escape. Half careless, therefore, she missed the fatal hold, and caught only a mouthful of yielding skin. Before she could try again--borne down and hampered as she was by the muskrat's weight--a set of long, tenacious teeth, crunching and cutting, met in the side of her face, just at the root of the jaw.

This time the muskrat was wise enough to hold on. His deep grip held like a vise. The mink's teeth, those vindictive teeth that had killed and killed for the mere joy of killing, now gnashed impotently. In utter silence, there in the choking deep, the water in their eyes and ears and jaws, they writhed and strove, the mink's lithe body twisting around her foe like a snake. Then, with a convulsive shudder, her struggles ceased. Her lungs had refused to hold the strained breath any longer. They had opened--and the water had filled them. Her body trailed out limply; and the muskrat, still maintaining that inexorable grip, dragged her out through the water-gate which he had so well kept. Out in the brown, blurred light of the current he still held her down, jamming her head into a patch of bright sand, until the ache of his own lungs gave him warning. Then, carrying the body to the surface, he flung it scornfully over a root to await the revival of his appetite, and proceeded to calm his excitement by a long, elaborate toilet. Steely dark and cold the waters of Bitter Creek slipped by between their leafless, bushy banks. And inside the dome of the house in the alders the thick-furred muskrat colony slept luxuriously, little dreaming of the doom just averted from their door.

[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's essay: Keeper Of The Water-Gate

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