A Little Alien In The Wilderness

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Title:     A Little Alien In The Wilderness
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

It was too hot and clear and still that morning for the most expert of fishermen to cast his fly with any hope of success. The broad pale-green lily pads lay motionless on the unruffled breast of Silverwater. Nowhere even the round ripple of a rising minnow broke the blazing sheen of the lake. The air was so drowsy that those sparks of concentrated energy, the dragonflies, forgot to chase their aerial quarry and slept, blazing like amethysts, rubies and emeralds, on the tops of the cattail rushes. Very lazily and without the slightest reluctance, Uncle Andy ruled in his line, secured his cast, and leaned his rod securely in a forked branch to await more favorable conditions for his pet pastime. For the present it seemed to him that nothing could be more delightful and more appropriate to the hour than to lie under the thick-leaved maple at the top of the bank, and smoke and gaze out in lotus-eating mood across the enchanted radiance of the water. Even the Child, usually as restless as the dragonflies themselves or those exponents of perpetual motion, the brown water skippers, was lying on his back, quite still, and staring up with round, contemplative blue eyes through the diaphanous green of the maple leaves.

Though his eyes were so very wide open, it was that extreme but ephemeral openness which a child's eyes so frequently assume just before closing up very tight. In fact, in just about three-eights of a minute he would have been, in all probability, sound asleep, with a rose-pink light, sifted through his eyelids, dancing joyously over his dreams. But at that moment there came a strange cry from up the sweeping curve of the shore--so strange a cry that the Child sat up instantly very straight, and demanded, with a gasp, "What's that?"

Uncle Andy did not answer for a moment. Perhaps it was because he was so busy lighting his pipe, or perhaps he hoped to hear the sound again before committing himself--for so experienced a woodsman as he was had good reason to know that most of the creatures of the wild have many different cries, and sometimes seem to imitate each other in the strangest fashion. He had not long to wait. The wild voice sounded again and again, so insistently, so appealingly that the Child became greatly excited over it. The sound was something between the bleat of an extraordinary, harsh-voiced kid and the scream of a badly frightened mirganser, but more penetrating and more strident than either.

"Oh, it's frightened, Uncle Andy!" exclaimed the Child. "What do you think it is? What does it want? Let's go and see if we can't help it!"

The pipe was drawing all right now, because Uncle Andy had made up his mind.

"It's nothing but a young fawn--a baby deer," he answered. "Evidently it has got lost, and it's crying for its mother. With a voice like that it ought to make her hear if she's anywhere alive--if a bear has not jumped on her and broken her neck for her. Ah! there she comes," he added, as the agitated bellowing of a doe sounded from further back in the woods. The two cries answered each other at intervals for a couple of minutes, rapidly nearing. And then they were silent.

The Child heaved a sigh of relief.

"I'm so glad he found his mother again!" he murmured. "It must be terrible to be lost in the woods--to be _quite_ alone, and not know, when you cried, whether it would be your mother or a bear that would come running to you from under the black trees!"

"I agree with you," said Uncle Andy, with unwonted heartiness. It was not too often that he was able to agree completely with the Child's suggestions in regard to the affairs of the wild. "Yes, indeed," he added reminiscently; "I tried it myself once, when I was about your age, away down in the Lower Ottanoonsis Valley, when the country thereabouts was not settled like it is now. And I didn't like it at all, let me tell you."

"What came ?" demanded the Child breathlessly. "Was it your mother, or a bear?"

"Neither!" responded Uncle Andy. "It was Old Tom Saunders, Bill's uncle--only he wasn't old, or Bill's uncle, at that time, as you may imagine if you think about it."

"Oh!" said the Child, a little disappointed. He had rather hoped it was the bear, since he felt assured of his uncle's ultimate safety.

"And I knew a little Jersey calf once," continued Uncle Andy, being now fairly started in his reminiscences and unwilling to disappoint the Child's unfailing thirst for a story, "in the same woods, who thought she was lost when she wasn't, and made just as much noise over it as if she had been. That, you see, was what made all the trouble. She was a good deal of a fool at that time--which was not altogether to be wondered at, seeing that she was only one day old; and when her mother left her sleeping under a bush for a few minutes, while she went down through the swamp to get a drink at the brook a couple of hundred feet away, the little fool woke up and thought herself deserted. She set up such a bleating as was bound to cause something to happen in that wild neighborhood."

"Yes!" said the Child, almost in a whisper. "And which came _this_ time--her mother or the bear?"

"Both!" replied Uncle Andy, most unexpectedly.

"Oh!" gasped the Child, opening his mouth till it was as round as his eyes. And for once he had not a single question ready.

"You see, it was this way," went on Uncle Andy, prudently giving him no time to think one up. "When the bear heard that noise he knew very well that the calf was all alone. And, being hungry, he lost no time in coming to seize the opportunity. What he didn't know was that the mother was so near. Naturally, he would never think the calf would make such a fuss if the mother were only down by the brook getting a drink. So he came along through the bushes at a run, taking no precautions whatever. And the mother came up from the brook at a run. And they met in a little open spot, about fifty feet from where the foolish calf stood, bawling under her bush. She stopped bawling and stood staring when she saw the bear and her mother meet.

"The bear was a big one, very hungry, and savage at the slightest hint that his meal, right there in sight, was going to be interfered with. The mother was a little fawn-colored Jersey cow, with short, sharp horns pointing straight forward, and game to the last inch of her trim make-up. Her fury, at sight of that black hulk approaching her foolish young one, was nothing short of a madness. But it was not a blind madness. She knew what she was doing, and was not going to let rage lose her a single point in the game of life and death.

"In spite of her disadvantage in being down the slope and so having to charge straight uphill, she hurled herself at the enemy with a ferocity that rather took him aback. He wheeled, settled upon his haunches, and lifted a massive forepaw, to meet the attack of a blow that should settle the affair at once. But the little cow was not to be caught so. Almost as the bear delivered his lunging stroke she checked herself, jumped aside with a nimbleness that no bull could have begun to match, and sank both horns deep into her great antagonist's flank. Before she could spring back again beyond his reach, however, with a harsh groan he swung about, and with the readiness of an accomplished boxer brought down his other forepaw across her neck, smashing the spine. Without a sound the gallant little cow crumpled up and fell in a heap against the bear's haunches.

"Throwing her off violently, he struck her again and again, as if in a panic. Then, realizing that she was quite dead, he drew away, bit fiercely at the terrible wound in his flank, and dragged himself away, whimpering. For the time, at least, his appetite was quite gone.

"Uncomprehending, but very anxious, the calf had watched the swift duel. The finish of it dismayed her, but, of course, she did not know why. She could only feel that, in spite of the disappearance of the bear, it was not altogether satisfactory. She had trembled instinctively at sight of the bear. And now, curiously enough, she trembled at the sight of her mother, lying there in a heap, so still."

Uncle Andy's way of putting it was somehow so vivid that the Child trembled too at that.

"After a while," continued Uncle Andy, "when she saw that her mother made no sign of rising and coming to her, she came staggering down from her place under the bush, her long, awkward legs very difficult to manage. Reaching her mother's side, she poked her coaxingly with her wet little muzzle. Meeting no response, she poked her impatiently, and even butted her. When even this brought no response, a sudden overwhelming terror chilled her heart, and her weak knees almost gave way. She had an impulse to run from this thing that looked like her mother and smelled like her mother, and yet was evidently, after all, not her mother. She was afraid to stay there. But she was also afraid to go away. And then she just began to bawl again at the top of her voice, for she was not only frightened and lonely, but also hungry.

"Of course, everything in the woods for half a mile around heard her bawling."

And just here Uncle Andy had the heartlessness to pause and relight his pipe.

"And then--another bear came!" broke in the Child breathlessly.

"No, not exactly," responded Uncle Andy at last. "Of course, lots of things came to see what all that queer noise was about--stealthy things, creeping up silently and peering with round bright eyes from thickets and weed tufts. But the calf did not see or notice any of these. All she saw was a tall, dark, ungainly looking, long-legged creature, half as tall again as her mother had been, with no horns, a long clumsy head, thick overhanging nose, and big splay hooves. She didn't quite know whether to be frightened at this great, dark form or not. But she stopped her noise, I can tell you.

"Well, the tall stranger stood still, about thirty or forty paces away, eyeing the calf with interest and the fawn-colored heap on the ground with suspicion. Then, all at once, the calf forgot her fears. She was so lonely, you know, and the stranger did not look at all like a bear. So, with a little appealing _Bah_, she ran forward clumsily, straight up to the tall stranger's side, paused a moment at the alien smell, and then, with a cool impudence only possible at the age of twenty-five hours, began to help herself to a dinner of fresh milk. The tall stranger turned her great dark head far around, sniffed doubtfully for a few seconds, and fell to licking the presumptuous one's back assiduously."

"I know," said the Child proudly. "It was a moose."

"I'd have been ashamed of you," said Uncle Andy, "if you hadn't known that at once from my description. Of course, it was a cow moose. But where the calf's great piece of luck came in was in the fact that the moose had lost her calf, just the day before, through its falling into the river and being swept away by the rapids. Her heart, heavy with grief and loneliness, her udder aching with the pressure of its milk, she had been drawn up to see what manner of baby it was that dared to cry its misery so openly here in the dangerous forest.

"And when the calf adopted her so confidently, after a brief shyness--the shyness of all wild things toward the creatures who have come under man's care--she returned the compliment of adopting the calf.

"After a little, when the calf had satisfied its appetite, she led it away through the trees. It followed readily enough for a while--for perhaps half a mile. Then it got tired, and stopped with its legs sprawled apart, and bawled after her appealingly. At first she seemed surprised at its tiring so soon. But with a resigned air she stopped. The calf at once lay down and resolutely went to sleep. Its wild mother, puzzled but patient, stood over it protectingly, licking its silky coat (so much softer than her own little one's had been), and smelling it all over as if unable to get used to the peculiar scent. When it woke up she led it on again, this time for perhaps a good mile before it began to protest against such incomprehensible activity. And so, by easy stages and with many stops, she led the little alien on, deep into her secret woods, and brought it, about sunset, to the shore of a tiny secluded lake.

"That same evening the farmer, looking for his strayed cow, came upon the dead body on the slope above the stream. He saw the marks of the fight and the tracks of the bear, and understood the story in part. But he took it for granted that the bear, after killing the mother, had completed the job by carrying off the calf. The tracks of the moose he paid no attention to, never dreaming that they concerned him in the least. But the bear he followed, vowing vengeance, till he lost the trail in the gathering dusk, and had to turn home in a rage, consoling himself with plans for bear traps.

"In her home by the lake, caressed and tenderly cared for by her tall new mother, the calf quickly forgot her real mother's fate. She forgot about the whole affair except for one thing. She remembered to be terribly afraid of bears--and that fear is indeed the beginning of wisdom, as far as all the children of the wild are concerned. She would start and tremble at sight of any particularly dense and bulky shadow, and to come unexpectedly upon a big black stump was for some weeks a painful experience. But the second step in wisdom--the value of silence--she was very slow to learn. If her new mother got out of her sight for half a minute she would begin bawling after her in a way that must have been a great trial to the nerves of a reticent, noiseless moose cow. The latter, moreover, could never get over the idea that to cause all that noise some dreadful danger must be threatening. She would come charging back on the run, her mane stiff on her back and her eyes glaring, and she would hunt every thicket in the neighborhood before she could feel quite reassured. Meanwhile, the calf would look with wonder in her big, velvet-soft eyes, with probably no slightest notion in her silly head as to what was making her new mother so excited."

"How inconvenient that they couldn't talk," exclaimed the Child, who had great faith in the virtue of explanations.

Uncle Andy rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"I suppose," he said, after a pause, "that the wild creatures _do_ talk among themselves, more or less and after a fashion. But, you see, such simple speech as the calf possessed was only what she had inherited, and that, of course, was cow language and naturally unintelligible to a moose. However, babies learn easily, and it was not long before she and her new mother understood each other pretty well on most points of importance.

"There were wildcats and foxes and a pair of big, tuft-eared, wild-eyed lynxes living about the lake, and these all came creeping up one after another, under the cover of the thickets, to stare in amazement at the alien little one so tenderly mothered by the great cow moose. They had seen calves, on the farms of the settlement, and they regarded this one not only with the greed of the hungry prowler, but with a particularly cruel hostility as one of the retainers of feared and hated Man. But for all their anger they took care not to thrust themselves upon the attention of the moose. They appreciated too well the fury of her mother wrath, the swiftness and deadliness of the stroke of her knife-edged forehooves. They were not going to let their curiosity obscure their discretion, you may be sure, like some of the childish deer and antelope often do."

"Why?" interrupted the Child eagerly, being all at once consumingly anxious to know what the deer and antelope were curious about. But Uncle Andy paid no attention whatever.

"Then, one morning," he continued, "two other moose cows came along up the lake shore, followed by their long-legged, shambling youngsters. They stopped to discuss the condition of lily roots with their tall sister; but at the sight of her nursing and petting and mothering a _calf_--a baby of the cattle tribe whom they despised and hated for its subservience to man and for living tamely behind fences, they became quite disagreeable. They sniffed loudly and superciliously. The calf, however, looking very small and neat and bright in her clean coat of fawn color beside the gaunt, awkward moose babies, was not in the least afraid of the disagreeable strangers. She pranced up boldly to investigate them.

"They wouldn't be investigated by the saucy little alien, and in a moment of folly one of them struck at her. The foster mother had been watching their attitude with jealous eyes and rising wrath, and now her wrath exploded. With a hoarse bleat she sprang upon the offender and sent her sprawling down the bank clean into the water. Then she turned upon the other. But this one, with quick discretion, was already trotting off hastily, followed by the two awkward youngsters. The triumphant foster mother turned to the calf and anxiously smelled it all over to make sure it had not been hurt. And the rash cow in the water, boiling with wrath, but afraid to risk a second encounter, picked herself up from among the lily pads and shambled off after her retreating party.

"As the summer deepened, however, the calf began to feel and act more like a moose calf--to go silently and even to absorb some of her foster mother's smell. The other moose began to get used to her, even quite to tolerate her; and, the wild creatures generally ceased to regard her as anything but a very unusual kind of moose. Of course, she _thought_ she _was_ a moose. She grew strong, sleek and nimble-footed on her foster mother's abundant milk, and presently learned to browse on the tender leaves and twigs of the fresh green shrubbery. She soon, however, found that the short, sweet grasses of the forest glades were much more to her taste than any leaves or stringy twigs. But the lily roots which her foster mother taught her to pull from the muddy lake bottom, as they wallowed luxuriously side by side in the cool water, defying flies and heat, suited her admirably. The great black moose bulls--hornless at this season and fat and amiable as sheep--regarded her with a reserved curiosity; and the moose calves, the strangeness of her form and color once worn off, treated her with great respect. Though she was so much smaller and lighter than they, her quickness on her feet and her extremely handy way of butting made her easily master of them all. Even the supercilious young cow who had been so disagreeable to her at first grew indifferently friendly, and all was peace around the secluded little lake.

"Late one afternoon, however, when the shadows were getting long and black across the forest glades, the peace was momentarily broken. The calf was pasturing in one of the glades, while her foster mother was wallowing and splashing down among the lilies. A bear creeping up through the thickets so noiselessly that not even a sharp-eyed chick-a-dee or a vigilant red squirrel took alarm, peered out between the branches and saw the calf.

"As luck would have it, it was the same old bear! He had recovered from his wound, but naturally he had not forgotten the terrible horns of the little fawn-colored Jersey cow. When he saw the fawn-colored calf he flew into a rage, and hurled himself forth at her to avenge in one stroke the bitter and humiliating memory.

"But the calf was too quick for him. At the first crackling of the branches behind her she had jumped away like a deer. From the corner of her eye she saw the great black shape rushing upon her, and, with a wild cry, half the bawl of a calf, half the bleat of a young moose, she went racing, tail in air, down to the water, with the bear at her heels.

"With a terrific splashing the cow moose hurried to the rescue. She was a very big moose and she was in a very big rage; and very formidable she looked as she came plowing her way to shore, sending up the water in fountains before her. He knew well that a full-grown cow moose was an awkward antagonist to tackle when she was in earnest. This one seemed to him to be very much in earnest. He hesitated and stopped his rush when about halfway down the bank. Caution began to cool his vengeful humor. After all, it seemed there was really no luck for him in a fawn-colored calf. He'd try a red one or a black-and-white one next time. As he came to this conclusion, the indignant moose came to shore. Whereupon, he wheeled with a grunt and made off, just a little faster, perhaps, than was _quite_ consistent with his dignity, into the darkness of the fir thickets. The moose, with the coarse hair standing up stiffly along her neck, shook herself and stood glaring after him.

"Through the summer and autumn the calf found it altogether delightful being a moose. As the cold began to bite her hair began to thicken up a protection against it; but, nevertheless, with her thin, delicate skin she felt it painfully. After the first heavy snowfall she had a lot of trouble to get food, having to paw down through the snow for every mouthful of withered grass. When the snow got to be three or four feet deep, and her foster mother, along with a wide-antlered bull, three other cows, and a couple of youngsters had trodden out a 'moose yard' with its maze of winding alleys, her plight grew sore. All along the bottom edges of these alleys she nibbled the dead grass and dry herbage, and she tried to browse, like her companions, on the twigs of poplar and birch. But the insufficient, unnatural food and the sharp cold hit her hard. She would huddle up beneath her mother's belly or crowd down among the rest of the herd for warmth, but long before Christmas she had become a mere bag of bones."

The Child shivered sympathetically. But, remembering the Snowhouse Baby, he could not help inquiring:

"Why didn't she make herself a house in the snow?"

"Didn't know enough!" answered Uncle Andy shortly. "Did you ever hear of any of the cow kind having sense enough for that? Well, it's a pretty sure thing, you may take it, that she would never have pulled through the winter if something unexpected hadn't happened to change her luck.

"It was the farmer--the one who had owned her mother, and who, of course, really owned her, too.

"With his hired man and a team of two powerful backwoods horses and a big sled for axes and food, he had come back into the woods to cut the heavy spruce timber which grew around the lake. A half-mile back from the lake, on the opposite shore, he had his snug log camp and his warm little barn full of hay. He and his man had everything they needed for their comfort except fresh meat. And when they came upon the winding paths of the 'moose yard' they knew they were not going to lack meat for long.

"On the following day, on snowshoes, the two men explored the 'yard,' tramping along beside the deep-trodden trails. Soon they came upon the herd, and marked the lofty antlers of the bull towering over a bunch of low fir bushes. The farmer raised his heavy rifle. It was an easy shot. He fired, and the antlered head went down.

"At the sound of the shot and the fall of their trusted leader, the herd scattered in panic, breasting down the walls of their paths and floundering off through the deep snow. The two men stared after them with interest, but made no motion for another shot, for it was against the New Brunswick law to kill a cow moose, and if the farmer had indulged himself in such a luxury it would have cost him a hundred pounds by way of a fine.

"Among the fleeing herd appeared a little fawn-colored beast, utterly unlike any moose calf that the farmer or his man had ever heard of. It was tremendously nimble at first, bouncing along at such a rate that it was impossible to get a really good look at it. But its legs were much too short for such a depth of snow, and before it had gone fifty yards it was quite used up. It stopped, floundered on another couple of yards, and then lay down quite helplessly. The two men hurried up. It turned upon them a pair of large, melting, velvet eyes--frightened, indeed, but not with that hopeless, desperate terror that comes to the eyes of the wild creatures when they are trapped.

"'Well, I'll be jiggered if that ain't old Blossom's calf that we made sure the bear had carried off!' cried the farmer, striding up and gently patting the calf's ribs. 'My, but you're poor!' he went on. 'They hain't used yer right out here in the woods, have they? I reckon ye'll be a sight happier back home in the old barn.'"

Uncle Andy knocked the ashes out of his pipe and stuck it back in his pocket.

"That's all!" said he, seeing that the Child still looked expectant.

"But," protested the Child, "I want to know--"

"Now, you know very well all the rest," said Uncle Andy. "What's the use of my telling you how the calf was taken back to the settlement, and got fat, and grew up to give rich milk like cream, as every good Jersey should? You can think all that out for yourself, you know."

"But the moose cow," persisted the Child. "Didn't she feel _dreadful_?"

"Well," agreed Uncle Andy, "perhaps she did. But don't you go worrying about that. She got over it. The next spring she had another calf, a real moose calf, to look after, you know."

[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's short story: Little Alien In The Wilderness

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