Rolf in the Woods

Before morning it came on to snow and it was three inches deep when they arose. There is no place on earth where the first snow is more beautiful than in the Adirondacks. In early autumn nature seems to prepare for it. Green leaves are cleared away to expose the berry bunches in red; rushbeds mass their groups, turn golden brown and bow their heads to meet the silver load; the low hills and the lines of various Christmas trees are arrayed for the finest effect: the setting is perfect and the scene, but it lacks the lime light yet. It needs must have the lavish blaze of white. And when it comes like the veil on a bride, the silver mountings on a charger’s trappings, or the golden fire in a sunset, the shining crystal robe is the finishing, the crowning glory, without which all the rest must fail, could have no bright completeness. Its beauty stirred the hunters though it found no better expression than Rolf’s simple words, “Ain’t it fine,” while the Indian gazed in silence.

There is no other place in the eastern woods where the snow has such manifold tales to tell, and the hunters that day tramping found themselves dowered over night with the wonderful power of the hound to whom each trail is a plain record of every living creature that has passed within many hours. And though the first day after a storm has less to tell than the second, just as the second has less than the third, there was no lack of story in the snow. Here sped some antlered buck, trotting along while yet the white was flying. There went a fox, sneaking across the line of march, and eying distrustfully that deadfall. This broad trail with many large tracks not far apart was made by one of Skookum’s friends, a knight of many spears. That bounding along was a marten. See how he quartered that thicket like a hound, here he struck our odour trail. Mark, how he paused and whiffed it; now away he goes; yes, straight to our trap.

“It’s down; hurrah!” Rolf shouted, for there, dead under the log, was an exquisite marten, dark, almost black, with a great, broad, shining breast of gold.

They were going back now toward the beaver lake. The next trap was sprung and empty; the next held the body of a red squirrel, a nuisance always and good only to rebait the trap he springs. But the next held a marten, and the next a white weasel. Others were unsprung, but they had two good pelts when they reached the beaver lake. They were in high spirits with their good luck, but not prepared for the marvellous haul that now was theirs. Each of the six traps held a big beaver, dead, drowned, and safe. Each skin was worth five dollars, and the hunters felt rich. The incident had, moreover, this pleasing significance: It showed that these beavers were unsophisticated, so had not been hunted. Fifty pelts might easily be taken from these ponds.

The trappers reset the traps; then dividing the load, sought a remote place to camp, for it does not do to light a fire near your beaver pond. One hundred and fifty pounds of beaver, in addition, to their packs, was not a load to be taken miles away; within half a mile on a lower level they selected a warm place, made a fire, and skinned their catch. The bodies they opened and hung in a tree with a view to future use, but the pelts and tails they carried on.

They made a long, hard tramp that day, baiting all the traps and reached home late in the night.

Chapter 32. The Antler-bound Bucks

In the man-world, November is the month of gloom, despair, and many suicides. In the wild world, November is the Mad Moon. Many and diverse the madnesses of the time, but none more insane than the rut of the white-tailed deer. Like some disease it appears, first in the swollen necks of the antler-bearers, and then in the feverish habits of all. Long and obstinate combats between the bucks now, characterize the time; neglecting even to eat, they spend their days and nights in rushing about and seeking to kill.

Their horns, growing steadily since spring, are now of full size, sharp, heavy, and cleaned of the velvet; in perfection. For what? Has Nature made them to pierce, wound, and destroy? Strange as it may seem, these weapons of offence are used for little but defence; less as spears than as bucklers they serve the deer in battles with its kind. And the long, hard combats are little more than wrestling and pushing bouts; almost never do they end fatally. When a mortal thrust is given, it is rarely a gaping wound, but a sudden springing and locking of the antlers, whereby the two deer are bound together, inextricably, hopelessly, and so suffer death by starvation. The records of deer killed by their rivals and left on the duel-ground are few; very few and far between. The records of those killed by interlocking are numbered by the scores.