Читать книгу Children of the Wild - Sir Charles G. D. Roberts - Страница 6

"I think I'd like to be a bird," murmured the Babe, wistfully gazing up at the dark green, feathery top of the great pine, certain of whose branches were tossing and waving excitedly against the blue, although there was not a breath of wind to ruffle the expanse of Silverwater. "I think I'd like it—rather." He added the qualification as a prudent after-thought, lest Uncle Andy should think him foolish.

"In summer!" suggested Uncle Andy, following the Babe's eyes toward the agitated pine-top.

"Of course in summer!" corrected the Babe hastily. "It must be awful to be a bird in winter!" And he shuddered.

"You'd better not say 'of course' in that confident way," said Uncle Andy rather severely. "You know so many of the birds go away south in the winter; and they manage to have a pretty jolly time of it, I should think."

For a moment the Babe looked abashed. Then his face brightened.

"But then, it is summer, for them, isn't it?" said he sweetly.

Uncle Andy gave him a suspicious look, to see if he realized the success of his retort. "Had me there!" he thought to himself. But the Babe's face betrayed no sign of triumph, nothing but that eager appetite for information of which Uncle Andy so highly approved.

"So it depends on what kind of a bird, eh, what?" said he, deftly turning the point. Then he scratched a sputtering sulphur match on the long-suffering leg of his trousers.

"Yes," said the Babe, with more decision now. "I'd like to be a crow."

Uncle Andy smoked meditatively for several minutes before replying, till the Babe began to grow less confident as to the wisdom of his choice. But as he gazed up at those green pine-tops, so clear against the blue, all astir with black wings and gay, excited ca-ings, he took courage again. Certainly those crows, at least, were enjoying themselves immensely.

And he had always had a longing to be able to play in the tops of the trees.

"Well," said Uncle Andy at last, "perhaps you're not so very far off, this time. If I couldn't be an eagle, or a hawk, or a wild goose, or one of those big-horned owls that we hear every night, or a humming-bird, then I'd rather be a crow than most. A crow has got enemies, of course, but then he's got brains, so that he knows how to make a fool of most of his enemies. And he certainly does manage to get a lot of fun out of life, taking it all in all, except when the owl comes gliding around his roosting places in the black nights, or an extra bitter midwinter frost catches him after a rainy thaw."

He paused and drew hard on his pipe, with that far-away look in his eyes which the Babe had learned to regard as the forerunner to a story. There were some interesting questions to ask, of course; but though bursting with curiosity as to why anyone should find it better to be a wild goose, or even a hummingbird, than a crow, the Babe sternly repressed himself. He would ask those questions by and by, that he promised himself. But he had learned that to speak inopportunely was sometimes to make Uncle Andy change his mind and shut up like an oyster. He was determined that he would not open his mouth till the story should be well under way, till his uncle should be himself too much interested to be willing to stop. And then, to his horror, just as he was recording this sagacious resolution in his mind, he heard himself demanding:

"But why after a rainy thaw?"

It was out before he could choke it back. There was nothing for him to do but stick to it and gaze at his uncle with disarming innocence. Uncle Andy turned upon him a glance of slow contumely.

"If you were going to be caught out in a blizzard, would you rather be in dry clothes or in wet ones?" he inquired.

The Babe smiled apologetically and resumed his study of the agitated pine-tops, whence, from time to time, a crow, or two or three, would burst forth for a brief, whirling flight, as if to show how it was done. Then other flights were made, which seemed to the Babe extremely brief and hesitating, as if the flyers were nervous when they found themselves out clear of the branches and suspended on their own wings over the empty deeps of air. Presently there was a sudden tumultuous outburst of ca-ing, the branches shook, and a whole flock, perhaps two score or more, swarmed into the air. After a few moments of clamorous confusion they all flew off in the direction of the muddy flats at the lower end of the lake. The pine-tops subsided into stillness. But an occasional hoarse croak or muttered guttural showed that a few of their occupants had been left at home. The Babe wondered what it had all been about, but he succeeded in holding his tongue.

In a moment or two this heroic self-restraint had its reward.

"Trying to show some of the youngsters how to fly, and jeering at the timid ones and the stupid ones!" explained Uncle Andy.

"Oh!" said the Babe, with a long, appreciative inflection.

Uncle Andy paused, leaving an opening for more questions. But the Babe refused to be drawn, so presently, with a comprehending grin, he went on:

"It's rather a small affair for crows, you know, this colony of theirs here on Silverwater. I suppose they've been crowded out from the places they really prefer, along the skirts of the settlements on the other side of the Ridge. They would rather live always somewhere near the farms and the cleared fields. Not that they have any special affection for man. Far from it. They dislike him, and distrust him, and seem to think him a good deal of a fool, too. His so-called 'scarecrows' are a great joke to them, and have been known at times to afford some fine materials for the lining of their nests. But they find him so useful in many really important ways that they establish their colonies in his neighborhood whenever they possibly can."

Here Uncle Andy made another long pause. He looked at the Babe suspiciously.

"Is anything the matter?" he demanded.

"No, thank you, Uncle Andy," replied the Babe politely.

"But you haven't asked a single question for at least seven minutes," said Uncle Andy.

"I was too busy listening to you," explained the Babe. "But there's one I'd like to ask, if it's all the same to you."

"Well, fire away," said his uncle.

"Why did they all fly away like that, as if they had just remembered something awfully important? And why would you rather be a little tiny humming-bird than a crow? And why did it take the whole flock that way to teach the young ones to fly? And—and why are they afraid, when they are born to fly? And why do they make fun of the stupid ones? And why would you like to be a wild goose? And, and—"

"Stop! stop!" cried Uncle Andy. "I didn't know you had a Gatling about you when I told you to fire away. You wait and shoot those questions at Bill, just like that, to-night."

"Well, but why—"

"No, you must not interrupt," insisted Uncle Andy.

"But you asked me! I was just as quiet—"

"I didn't know what I was doing!" said his uncle. "And I can't possibly answer all those questions. Why, I could never begin to remember half of them."

"I can," interposed the Babe.

"Oh, you needn't mind," said Uncle Andy, hastily. "But perhaps, if you listen with great care, you may find answers to some of them in what I am going to tell you. Of course, I don't promise, for I don't know what you asked me. But maybe you'll hear something that will throw some light on the subject."

"Thank you very much," said the Babe.

"There were only two young ones in the nest," said Uncle Andy, in his sometimes irrelevant way, which seemed deliberately designed to make the Babe ask questions. "The nest was a big, untidy structure of sticks and dead branches; but it was strongly woven for all its untidiness, because it had to stand against the great winds sweeping down over the Ridge. Inside it was very nicely and softly lined with dry grass, and some horse-hair, and a piece of yellow silk from the lining of what had once been a ruffle or something like that that women wear. The nest was in a tall pine, which stood at one end of a grove of ancient fir trees overlooking a slope of pasture and an old white farmhouse with a big garden behind it. Nearly all the trees had crows' nests in their tops, but in most of the other nests there were three or four young crows."

As Uncle Andy paused again at this point the Babe, who was always polite, felt that he was really expected to ask a question here. If he did not, it might look as if he were not taking an interest. He would rather ask too many questions than run the risk of seeming inappreciative.

"Why were there only two young ones in the nest in the pine tree?" he inquired.

It was very hard to know sometimes just what would please Uncle Andy, and what wouldn't. But this time it was quite all right.

"Now, that's a proper, sensible question," said he. "I was just coming to that. You see, there ought to have been four youngsters in that nest, too, for there had been four greeny-blue, brown-spotted eggs to start with. But even crows have their troubles. And the pair that owned this particular nest were a somewhat original and erratic couple. When the mother had laid her last egg and was getting ready to sit, she decided to take an airing before settling down to work. Though her mate was not at hand to guard the nest, she flew off down to the farm to see if there was anything new going on among those foolish men, or perhaps to catch a mouse among the cornstalks."

"Do crows eat mice?" demanded the Babe in astonishment.

"Of course they do," answered Uncle Andy impatiently. "Everybody that eats meat at all eats mice, except us human beings. And in some parts of the world we, too, eat them, dipped in honey."

"Oh—h—h!" shuddered the Babe.

"Well, as I was going to say when you interrupted me, no sooner was she well out of the way than a red squirrel, who had been watching from the nearest fir tree, saw his chance. It was a rare one. Nobody liked eggs better than he did, or got fewer of them. Like a flash he was over from the fir branches into the pine ones, and up and into the nest.

"His sharp teeth went into the nearest egg, and he drank its contents greedily—and cleverly, let me tell you, for it's not so easy to manage without getting it all over your fur. He was just going to begin on another when there was a sharp hiss of wings just above him and a loud ca-ah of alarm. The father bird was back and swooping down upon him. He threw himself clear of the nest, fell to a lower branch, and raced out to its tip to spring into his fir tree. At this moment the furious father struck him, knocking him clean off into the air.

"The air was now full of black wings and angry cries, as the crows from neighboring nests flocked to the help of their fellow citizen. But the little red robber was brave and kept his head. Spreading his legs wide and flat, he made a sort of parachute of himself, and, instead of falling like a stone, he glided down to another branch. Those beating wings and terrible jabbing beaks were all about him, but they got in each other's way. And he was a wonder at dodging, I can tell you, now that he was among the bigger branches, and, though he got several nasty thrusts, which covered his fine coat with blood, he gained his hole, halfway down the tree, and whisked into it safely.

"Into this narrow retreat, of course, none of the crows dared to follow him, knowing that they would there be at the mercy of his teeth. But they gathered in fierce excitement about the entrance, scolding the audacious thief at the top of their voices, and threatening him with every kind of vengeance when he should dare to come out. And from time to time one or another of the boldest would alight on the very edge of the hole, cock his head, and peer in, to bounce away again instantly with a startled squawk as the squirrel would jump up at him, chattering with rage.

"In the midst of all this excitement the careless mother came hurrying back. She had heard the row, of course. One could hear it all over the parish. Unobserved, she flew straight to the nest. Her big, dark, cunning eyes blazed for an instant, but she knew it was all her fault, and she thought it best to make no fuss. Hastily she dropped the empty shell over the side of the nest, and then took her place dutifully on the three remaining eggs. In a few minutes the rest of the crows got tired of scolding the squirrel in his hole and came ca-ing back to the pine tree to talk the matter over. When her mate, all in a fume, hopped onto the edge of the nest, the mother looked up at him with eyes of cold inquiry, as much as to say: 'Well, I'd like to know what all this fuss is about. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, acting that way about a wretched squirrel!' Of course, she may not have said all that. But she certainly gave all the other crows the impression that there was nothing wrong about her nest, and that they had better go and look after their own. Thereupon they all said sarcastic things to their fellow citizen and left him indignantly. He, poor fellow, found it impossible to explain or justify himself, because his mate was sitting on the eggs; so he flew off in a huff to try and find a sparrow's nest to rob. When he came back he had taken pains to forget just how many eggs there had ever been in the nest.

"Oh, yes, I know there were still three. Well, three or four days later a boy came up from the farmhouse and climbed the pine tree, He was not the kind of a boy that robs birds' nests, but he was making a collection. He wanted just one crow's egg, and he had a theory that birds cannot count. He liked crows—in fact, on that farm no one was ever allowed to shoot crows or any other birds except the murderous duck hawk, and he felt that the crows owed him one egg, anyhow, in return for the protection they enjoyed on his father's property.

"Now, you must not think he chose the pine tree because it was the easiest to climb," went on Uncle Andy hurriedly, seeing in the Babe's eyes that this point had to be cleared up at once. "In fact, it was the hardest to climb. Any one of the fir trees would have been easier, and they all had crows' nests in them. But the boy knew that he could not climb any of them without getting his clothes all over balsam, which would mean a lot of inconvenient explanations with his mother. So he went up the pine tree, of course, and spared his mother's feelings.

"The crows displayed no sense of gratitude whatever. He might have eggs, of course, that boy, but not their eggs! They flapped around him savagely, and made so much noise in his ears that he could not hear himself think. But he kept his big straw hat pulled down well over his eyes, and paid no attention whatever to the indignant birds. And because he was so quiet and positive about it, not one of them quite dared to actually touch him. The mother bird hopped off the nest sullenly just as he was about to put his hand on her. He took one egg, put it in his pocket, examined the nest with interest, and climbed down again. Just as he was nearing the ground he broke the egg. This, of course, made him feel not only sticky but somewhat embarrassed. He saw that he might have some difficulty in explaining that pocket to his mother. Even a great deal of balsam would have been better than that egg. But he comforted himself with the thought that he would never have been able to blow it, anyhow, on account of its being so advanced.

"And that's why there were only two young crows in that particular nest.

"But they were an altogether unusual pair, these two. In the first place, receiving all the food and all the attention that were usually divided among four or five, they had grown and feathered extraordinarily fast, till now they were ready for flight, while their fellows in the neighboring nests were still ragged and 'quilly' looking. In the second place, they had inherited from their eccentric parents an altogether surprising amount of originality. Their feathers were beautifully firm and black and glossy, their beaks sharp and polished; and in their full, dark, intelligent eyes there was an impishness that even a crow might regard as especially impish."

"What's impish?" demanded the Babe.

"Goodness me! Don't you know what impish is?" exclaimed Uncle Andy. He thought a moment, and then, finding it a little difficult to explain, he added with convenient severity:

"If you will listen, you'll find out, perhaps."

"Well, the two grew so fast that, before their parents realized at all what precocious youngsters they were, they had climbed out upon the edge of the nest and begun to stretch their fine wings. With hoarse expostulations their father tried to persuade them back. But their mother, who was not so conservative, chuckled her approval and flew off to hunt young mice for them. Thus encouraged, they ignored their father's prudent counsels, and hopped out, with elated squawks, upon the branch. Whereupon the father, somewhat huffed, flew up to the very topmost branch of the tree and perched there, swaying in the breeze, and trying to forget his family cares. From this high post of observation he presently caught sight of an eagle, winging his way up from the swamp at the lower end of the valley. With a sharp signal cry for volunteers, he dashed off in pursuit. He was joined by two other crows who happened to be at leisure; and the three, quickly overtaking the majestic voyager, began to load him with impertinence and abuse. With their comparatively short but very broad wings the crows could dodge so nimbly in the air that if was quite impossible for their great enemy to catch them. He made no attempt to do so. Indignantly he changed the direction of his flight, and began to soar, climbing gradually into the blue in splendid, sweeping circles; while the crows, croaking mockery and triumph, kept flapping above him and below, darting at his eyes, and dashing with open beaks at the shining whiteness of his crown. They dared not come near enough to actually touch him, but they succeeded in making themselves most unpleasant. The eagle glared at them steadily with his fierce, black-and-yellow eyes, but otherwise seemed to pay them no attention whatever. Only he kept mounting higher and higher, till at last his impish tormentors—impish, I said—dared follow him no farther. They came fluttering down hurriedly to more congenial levels, and flew back to the grove to boast of their 'great victory.'"

"My, but that eagle must have felt awfully ashamed!" exclaimed the Babe.

"The next day," continued Uncle Andy, without noticing the interruption, "the two old crows began to think it would soon be time to teach this independent pair of youngsters to fly. And they thought, too, that they'd be able to manage it all by themselves, without any help or advice from the rest of the flock. While they were thinking about it, in the next tree, for they were not a great pair to stay at home, you know, one of the youngsters, the female, gave an impatient squawk, spread her wings, and fell off her branch. She thought it was flying, you know, but at first she just fell, flapping her wings wildly. In two seconds, however, she seemed to get the hang of it, more or less. With a violent effort, she rose, gained the next tree, alighted, panting, beside her parents and looked at them with a superior air, as if she thought that they could never have accomplished such a thing at her age. That was perhaps true, of course, but it was not for her to think so."

"Huh! I should think not, indeed!" agreed the Babe severely.

"Well," continued Uncle Andy, now quite absorbed in his narrative, "the other youngster, not to be outdone, went hopping up in great excitement from branch to branch, till he was some ten feet above the rest of the family. Then, launching himself boldly, he went fluttering down to them with no difficulty at all. He was less impetuous and more sagacious than his sister.

"After this the parents continued to feed their independent offspring for a number of days, just because they had been accustomed to feed their nestling for a certain length of time, till at last the youngsters started off to forage on their own account, and the family, as a family, broke up. From habit, however, or from good will, the youngsters kept coming back to roost on the branches beside the nest, and remained on the most friendly, though easy-going, relations with their father and mother.

"In every crow flock, large or small, there seems to be some kind of discipline, some kind of obedience to the wise old leaders of the flock. But the two black imps of Pine-Top were apparently, for the time at least, exempted from it. They did about as they liked and were a nuisance to everybody but their two selves, whom they admired immensely. Being too young for the old crows to take seriously, their pranks were tolerated, or they would soon have been pecked and beaten into better manners. Too big and too grown-up for the young crows—whom they visited in their nests and tormented till driven away by the indignant parents—they had no associates but each other. So they followed their own whims; and the flock was philosophically indifferent as to what might happen to them.

"You must not think, however, that they did not learn anything, these two. They were sharp. They listened to what was being said around them, and the crows, you know, are the greatest talkers ever; so they soon knew the difference between a man with a gun and a man without one. They knew that an owl in the daytime is not the same thing as an owl at night. They gathered that a scarecrow is not as dangerous as it looks. And many other things that a crow needs to know and believe they condescended to learn, because learning came easy to them. But common caution they did not learn, because it did not seem to them either interesting or necessary. So it was often just luck that got them out of scrapes, though they always thought it was their own cleverness.

"It was just lucky, of course, that day when they went exploring in the patch of dark woods down in the valley, that the big brown owl did not get one or the other of them. He was asleep on a big dead branch as brown as himself, and looking so like a part of it that they were just going to alight, either upon him or within reach of his deadly clutch, when a red squirrel saw them and shrieked at them. Two great, round, glaring orange eyes opened upon them from that brown prong of the branch, so suddenly that they gave two startled squawks and nearly fell to the ground. How the red squirrel tittered, hating both the owl and the crows. But the imps, when they got over their start, were furious. Flying over the owl's head, they kept screaming at the top of their voices something which probably meant 'an owl! an owl! an owl!'; and immediately every other crow within hearing took up the cry, till in two minutes half the flock were gathered in the patch of woods. They swarmed screaming about the owl's head, striking at him with their sharp beaks and strong black wings, but always too wary to come quite within his reach. The great night prowler knew that in the daylight he could not catch them—that, indeed, if he did succeed in catching one in his claws the others would throw caution to the winds and all be down upon him at once. He sat there, straight and stiff, for a while, snapping his terrible beak and hissing at them like an angry cat. Till at last, realizing that there was no more chance of a peaceful sleep for him there, he spread his huge, downy wings and sailed off smoothly to seek some more secluded neighborhood. The whole flock pursued him, with their tormenting and abuse, for perhaps a couple of miles; and then, at some signal from their leaders, dropped the chase suddenly and turned their attention to what looked like a sort of game of tag, in a wide, open pasture where no enemy could steal upon them unawares. The imps felt themselves great heroes, but if it had not been for that red squirrel, the owl, sleepy though he was, would certainly have got one of them."

The Babe wanted to ask whether the squirrel had warned them out of friendliness or just out of dislike to the owl, but before he could frame his question quite satisfactorily, or get out anything more than a hasty "But why—?" Uncle Andy had gone on with an emphasis which discouraged interruption.

"It was lucky for them, too, that no guns were fired on the big farm below the grove—the crows were there believed to earn the corn they stole by the grubs and cutworms and mice they killed. That was very lucky for the two imps, for they were forever hanging about the farmyard and the big locust trees that ran along the foot of the garden. The farmer himself and his hired hands paid no attention to them, but the boy, the one who had prevented there being three imps instead of two, he was tremendously interested. At first they were shy of him, because, perhaps, they felt him watching them out of the corners of his keen blue eyes. But at last they decided he was no more dangerous than the rest, and made sarcastic remarks about him in a language which he couldn't understand.

"There was always food to be picked up around the farmyard when the men were absent in the fields, the womenfolk busy in the kitchen, and the boy somewhere out of sight. And it was food doubly sweet because it had to be stolen from the fussy hens or the ridiculous ducks or the stupid, complacent pigeons. Then there was always something interesting to be done. It was fun to bully the pigeons and to give sly, savage jabs to the half-grown chicks. It was delightful to steal the bright tops of tin tomato cans—they thought they were stealing them, of course, because they could not imagine such fascinating things being thrown away, even by those fool men—to snatch them hurriedly, fly off with them to the tall green pine-top, and hide them in their old nest till they got it looking quite like a rubbish dump, and good pasture for a goat. And most of all, perhaps, was it fun to tease the lazy old kitchen cat, till her tail would get as big as a bottle brush with helpless indignation."

"The cat?" exclaimed the Babe. "Why, weren't they afraid of her?"

"Wait and see!" remarked Uncle Andy simply, with no apologies whatever to the Prime Minister. "Well, as I was about to say, their method was simple and effective. They would wait till they found the cat lying along the narrow top of the rail fence, sunning herself. It was her favorite place, though it can hardly have been comfortable, it was so narrow. The He imp would alight on the rail, about ten feet in front of her, and pretend to be very sick, squawking feebly and drooping his black wings with a struggling flutter, as if it was all he could do to keep his perch. The cat, her narrow eyes opening very wide, would start to creep up to him. The She imp would then alight on the rail behind her and nip her sharply by the tail, and go hopping clumsily off down the rail. The cat would wheel with an angry pfiff-ff, and start after this new quarry. Whereupon the He imp would again nip her tail. This would be repeated several times before the cat would realize that she was being made a fool of. Then she would bounce down from the fence and race off to the kitchen in a towering rage, and the impudent youngsters would fly up into the nearest tree top and ca about it delightedly.

"Then there was the scarecrow, in the middle of the big strawberry patch down at the foot of the huge garden. It did not scare these two young rascals, not in the least. It was an excellently made scarecrow, and did strike terror to the heart of many of the smaller birds. But its hat was packed with straw, and the imps found it was a pleasant game pulling the straws out through a couple of holes in the crown, and strewing them over the strawberry bed. Incidentally, they liked strawberries, and ate a good many of them as sauce to their ordinary diet of grubs and mice and chicken feed. And it was this weakness of theirs for strawberries that led to their misunderstanding with the Boy, and then with the big rat that lived under the tool shed.

"That strawberry patch was one of the things that the Boy took a particular interest in. When he saw that the imps also took such an interest in it, eating the berries instead of the grubs, he began to get annoyed. From his window, which overlooked the garden, he had seen what liberties the imps took with the scarecrow, so he realized there was no help for him in scarecrows. But something must be done, that he vowed, and done at once, or his strawberries were going to be mighty scarce. He didn't want to do any real harm to even such a troublesome pair of birds as the imps, but he was determined to give them a lesson that might teach them some respect, not only for strawberry patches, but even for scarecrows.

"On the crown of the scarecrow's old hat, which he had observed to be a favorite perch of the imps, he arranged a noose of light cord. From the noose he ran the cord down the scarecrow's single leg (scarecrows, you know, have usually only one leg), across to the hedge, along the hedge to the house, and up and into his room. He fixed it so it ran without a hitch. He was very proud of it altogether. Much pleased with himself, he got a book and a couple of apples, and seated himself at his window to wait for his chance.

"As it happened, however, the imps were just then away in the meadow, hunting mice. For a whole hour the Boy saw no sign of them. Then, being called away to go on an errand into the village, he tied the end of the cord to his bedpost, and left it with a word of advice to do what it could in his absence.

"Well, it did! For a mere bit of string, all by itself, it didn't do badly. First the old brown rat, with his fierce little eyes and pointed, whiskered nose, came out from under the toolhouse and began exploring the strawberry patch. He didn't think much of strawberries in themselves, but he was apt to find fat grubs and beetles and sleepy June bugs under the clustering leaves. He came upon the string, stretched taut. He was just about to bite it through and try to carry it off to his nest when it occurred to him it might be a trap. He turned away discreetly, and snapped up a plump June bug.