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Page 9
For two hours he did not find a crayfish. Then he came out of the green
timber into the edge of a burned-over country. Here everything was
black. The stumps of the trees stood up like huge charred canes. It was
a comparatively fresh "burn" of last autumn, and the ash was still soft
under Baree's feet. Straight through this black region ran the creek,
and over it hung a blue sky in which the sun was shining. It was quite
inviting to Baree. The fox, the wolf, the moose, and the caribou would
have turned back from the edge of this dead country. In another year it
would be good hunting ground, but now it was lifeless. Even the owls
would have found nothing to eat out there.
It was the blue sky and the sun and the softness of the earth under his
feet that lured Baree. It was pleasant to travel in after his painful
experiences in the forest. He continued to follow the stream, though
there was now little possibility of his finding anything to eat. The
water had become sluggish and dark. The channel was choked with charred
debris that had fallen into it when the forest had burned, and its
shores were soft and muddy. After a time, when Baree stopped and looked
about him, he could no longer see the green timber he had left. He was
alone in that desolate wilderness of charred tree corpses. It was as
still as death, too. Not the chirp of a bird broke the silence. In the
soft ash he could not hear the fall of his own feet. But he was not
frightened. There was the assurance of safety here.
If he could only find something to eat! That was the master thought
that possessed Baree. Instinct had not yet impressed upon him that this
which he saw all about him was starvation. He went on, seeking
hopefully for food. But at last, as the hours passed, hope began to die
in him. The sun sank westward. The sky grew less blue; a low wind began
to ride over the tops of the stubs, and now and then one of them fell
with a startling crash.
Baree could go no farther. An hour before dusk he lay down in the open,
weak and starved. The sun disappeared behind the forest. The moon
rolled up from the east. The sky glittered with stars--and all through
the night Baree lay as if dead. When morning came, he dragged himself
to the stream for a drink. With his last strength he went on. It was
the wolf urging him--compelling him to struggle to the last for his
life. The dog in him wanted to lie down and die. But the wolf spark in
him burned stronger. In the end it won. Half a mile farther on he came
again to the green timber.
In the forests as well as in the great cities fate plays its changing
and whimsical hand. If Baree had dragged himself into the timber half
an hour later he would have died. He was too far gone now to hunt for
crayfish or kill the weakest bird. But he came just as Sekoosew, the
ermine, the most bloodthirsty little pirate of all the wild--was making
a kill.
That was fully a hundred yards from where Baree lay stretched out under
a spruce, almost ready to give up the ghost. Sekoosew was a mighty
hunter of his kind. His body was about seven inches long, with a tiny
black-tipped tail appended to it, and he weighed perhaps five ounces. A
baby's fingers could have encircled him anywhere between his four legs,
and his little sharp-pointed head with its beady red eyes could slip
easily through a hole an inch in diameter. For several centuries
Sekoosew had helped to make history. It was he--when his pelt was worth
a hundred dollars in king's gold--that lured the first shipload of
gentlemen adventurers over the sea, with Prince Rupert at their head.
It was little Sekoosew who was responsible for the forming of the great
Hudson's Bay Company and the discovery of half a continent. For almost
three centuries he had fought his fight for existence with the trapper.
And now, though he was no longer worth his weight in yellow gold, he
was the cleverest, the fiercest, and the most merciless of all the
creatures that made up his world.
As Baree lay under his tree, Sekoosew was creeping on his prey. His
game was a big fat spruce hen standing under a thicket of black currant
bushes. The ear of no living thing could have heard Sekoosew's
movement. He was like a shadow--a gray dot here, a flash there, now
hidden behind a stick no larger than a man's wrist, appearing for a
moment, the next instant gone as completely as if he had not existed.
Thus he approached from fifty feet to within three feet of the spruce
hen. That was his favorite striking distance. Unerringly he launched
himself at the drowsy partridge's throat, and his needlelike teeth sank
through feathers into flesh.
Sekoosew was prepared for what happened then. It always happened when
he attacked Napanao, the wood partridge. Her wings were powerful, and
her first instinct when he struck was always that of flight. She rose
straight up now with a great thunder of wings. Sekoosew hung tight, his
teeth buried deep in her throat, and his tiny, sharp claws clinging to
her like hands. Through the air he whizzed with her, biting deeper and
deeper, until a hundred yards from where that terrible death thing had
fastened to her throat, Napanao crashed again to earth.
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