Читать книгу: «A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.», страница 3

That gopher snake just passed on the trail, with a young rabbit half swallowed, illustrates near enough how one-half of the world is trying to swallow the other. Observe, too, that provision of nature, by which game is swallowed larger than the throat. It is the smallest half of the world, it seems, that is trying to swallow the largest half, with good prospect of success. Half a dozen men have located all the redwood timber upon the accessible streams of this county. Looking coastward along the Novarro, there is a chain of townships spanning this stream for fifteen miles in length, owned by two men. You may write down the names of twenty men who are at this moment planning to swallow all the leading business interests of this State. They will elect Governors and Legislators. It don't matter that the game is larger than the throat. In fact, deglutition is already pretty well advanced – as far, at least, as with the rabbit; but with this difference, that our victims will be made to grease themselves.

If the day is preceded by three or four hours of moonlight, you will not often find a deer browsing after the sun is up. His work is done, and he has lain down in a thicket for a morning nap. It was kind of the log-driver to take us to the hills at the faintest streak of dawn. But once there, he slipped away by himself, and in hardly more than half an hour there were three cracks of a rifle. He came round with no game. We had seen none. It was not so very interesting to stand as a sentinel on the hill-tops in the chill of a gray morning, yearning for one's breakfast, and wishing all the deer were locked up in some canyon with a bottomless abyss. A new stand was taken, when presently our friend pointed out the line of a deer's back, standing half hidden by a clump of rocks of nearly the same color. We must both fire together, and make a sure thing of the game. There was a sharp report, and the deer jumped clear of the rocks and disappeared. He fell in his tracks. There was a single bullet-mark. But our friend insisted that both shots had taken effect in the same spot. It was a fawn, not more than two-thirds grown, and the glaze was just coming over its mild, beseeching eyes. We were sorry for a moment that both rifles had not missed. The log-driver shouldered the game, but disclaimed all ownership. A little farther on a dead buck was skewered over a limb, and still farther a buck and a doe were suspended in the same way. It was a good morning's work. Every shot of the log-driver had told. A slight pang of remorse was succeeded by a little glow of exultation. Venison is good, and a hungry man is carnivorous. It is a clear case that the taking of this one deer is right. The log-driver must satisfy his conscience for taking three, as best he can. His left eye had a merry twinkle, however, when, on handing over our gun, he observed that the cap only had exploded, and that the load placed there on setting out was still in the rifle chamber. Well, we got the venison, and the log-driver told his sly story with a keen relish, and some addenda.

This Arcadia is a wondrously human place, after all. Borrowing a pony to ride up the valley three or four miles, night and the hospitality of a neighbor overtook us. A mist settled down over the valley, and under the great overhanging trees not a trace of the road could be seen. "Only give him the rein," said the settler, "and the horse will go straight home." We gave him the rein. An hour, by guess, had gone by, and still that pony was ambling along, snorting occasionally as the dry sticks broke suspiciously in the edge of the woods. If a grizzly was there, his company was not wanted. Another hour had gone by. Pray, how long does it take a pony to amble over three miles in a pitch-dark night? Half an hour later, he turned off to the left, crossed the valley, and brought up at a fence. "Give him the rein," was the injunction. He had that, and a vigorous dig besides. In half an hour more he was on the other side of the valley, drawn up at another fence. It was too dark to discover any house. The true destination was a small white tavern by the roadside, and the light of the wood fire in the great fire-place would certainly shine through the window. The vagabond pony took the spur viciously, and went off under the trees. We were lost; that was certain. It was getting toward midnight. It was clear that this equine rascal was not going home. He had traveled at least four hours, and was now, probably, several miles outside the settlement, unless he had been going around in a circle. A night in a wilderness, enveloped in a chilling fog, the moisture of which was now dripping from the trees, with the darkness too great to discover when the horse laid his ears back as a sign of danger, was the best thing in prospect. Some time afterward he had evidently turned into a field, and a few minutes later was in front of a settler's house. A ferocious dog made it useless to dismount; the bars were jumped – the diminutive cob coming down on his knees, and a moment afterward bringing up under the window of a small house. The window went up slowly, in answer to a strong midnight salutation; and to this day it is not quite clear whether a rifle barrel, a pitchfork, or a hoe-handle was protruded from that window, or whether all this was an illusion born of the darkness of the night.

"Well, stranger, how did you get in here, and what do you want?" asked the keeper of this rural castle.

"I am lost; you must either let me in, or come out and show me the way."

"Likely story you're lost! Reckon that don't go down in this settlement. You ain't lost if you're here, are you?"

"Look here! I borrowed Jimson's pony to go up to Dolman's, and started back after nightfall. Dolman said, 'Give him the reign, and he would go straight back to the tavern.' I gave him the rein, and he has been going for the last four or five hours, except when he stopped two or three times at fences, until he brought up here."

I think the hoe-handle, or whatever it might have been, was slowly drawn in. A match was touched off on the casement, making about as much light as a fire-fly. The settler, shading his eyes, threw a glimmer of light on to the neck of the iron-gray pony.

"Yes; that's Jimson's pony – that are a fact."

A moment after, a tall figure glided out, as from a hole in the wall, and stood by the horse.

"Now, tell me, my good friend, where I am, what is the hour, and how to get back to the tavern."

"Well, it mought be nigh onto twelve o'clock, and you're not more'n two miles from Jimson's."

"I left at seven o'clock to go down to Jimson's, about three miles. Where have I been all this time? If I have been nearly five hours going half of three miles, how shall I ever get back to the tavern?"

"Stranger, you don't understand all the ways of this settlement. You see that's the pony that the Jimson boys take when they go 'round courting the gals in this valley. He thought you wanted to go 'round kind o' on a lark; and that pony, for mere devilment, had just as lief go-a-courting as not. Stopped out yonder at a fence, did he, and then went across the valley, and then over to the foot-hills? Well, he went up to Tanwood's first, and being as that didn't suit, expect he went across to Weatherman's – he's got a fine gal – then he came on down to Jennings' – mighty fine gal there. He's been there with the boys lots o' times."

"Well, why did the pony come over here?"

"You see, stranger, I've got a darter, too."

"How far has that wandering rascal carried me since seven o'clock?"

"Nigh upon fifteen miles, maybe twenty; and he'd a gone all night, if you'd let him. He ain't half done the settlement yet."

"Then I, a middle-aged man of family, have been carried 'round this settlement in this fog, which goes to the marrow-bones, and under trees, to get a broken head, and on blind cross-trails, for twenty miles or so, and have got just half-way back; and all because this pony is used by the boys for larking?"

"I reckon you've struck it, stranger. Mustn't blame that hoss too much. He thought you was on it. Now, it's a straight road down to Jimson's; but don't let him turn to the left below. Runnel lives down there, and he's got a darter, too. She's a smart 'un."

A few minutes later, as if the evil one was in that iron-gray, he took the left-hand road. But he sprang to the right, when the rowel went into his flank, carrying with it the assurance that the game was up.

It was past midnight when that larking pony came steaming up to the little white tavern. The smoldering wood fire threw a flickering light into the porch, enough to see that the ears of the gamy little horse were set forward in a frolicking way, saying clearly enough: "If you had only given me the rein, as advised, we would have made a night of it."

This new Arcadia is not so dull, when once the ways are learned. The Jimson boys affirmed that the pony was just mean enough to play such a trick on a stranger. But the old tavern loft rang with merriment until the small hours of the night. It was moderated by a motherly voice which came from the foot of the stairs: "You had better hush up. The stranger knows all the places where you've been gallivanting 'round this settlement."

When the sun had just touched the hills with a morning glory, we were well on the way out of the valley. Coveys of quails with half-grown chicks were coming out from cover. The grouse were already at work in the wild berry patches on the side of the mountain; one or two larks went before with an opening benediction, while the glistening madrono shed its shower of crystals. Looking back, there was a thin, blue vapor curling up from the cabins. We were reconciled to the mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside, with a reservation about the fried meat within. Peace be with the old man who said our speech would not do for that settlement. And long life to the pony that mistook our sober mission for one of wooing and frolic on a dark and foggy night.

UNDER A MADROÑO

Jeeheeboy, the Parsee, says that the highest conception of heaven is a place where there is nothing to do. We had found that place under an oak, yesterday, and had conquered a great peace. All the world was going right, for once, no matter which way it went. But opening one eye, the filagree of sunlight, sifting through the leaves, disclosed hundreds of worms letting themselves down by gossamer cables toward the earth. Now and then a swallow darted under the tree, and left a cable fluttering without ballast in the breeze. If a worm is ambitious to plumb some part of the universe, there is no philosophy in this world which will insure perfect composure, when it is clear that one's nose or mouth is to be made the "objective point." The madrono harbors no vagabonds – not a leaf is punctured, and no larva is deposited under its bark, probably for the reason that the outer rind is thrown off every year. It is not kingly, but it is the one undefiled tree of the forest. When its red berries are ripe, the robins have a thanksgiving-day; and the shy wild pigeons dart among its branches, unconsciously making themselves savory for the spit.

Little creepers of yerba buena– the sweetest and most consoling of all herbs – interlace underneath the tree; and within sight the dandelion blooms, and perfects its juices for some torpid liver; while under the fence the wild sage puts forth its gray leaves, gathering subtile influences from earth and air to give increase of wisdom and longevity. If the motherly old prophetess of other days – she who had such faith in God and simples – would come this way, she might gather herbs enough to cure no small part of this disordered world.

Take it all in all, one might go a long way and not find another more perfect landscape. The dim, encircling mountains – one with the ragged edges of an extinct volcano still visible; the warm hill-sides, where vine, and fig, and olive blend; the natural park in the foreground, begirt with clear waters which break through a canyon above – the home of trout, grown too cunning for the hook, except on cloudy days; the line of perpetual green which the rivulet carries a mile farther down, and loses it at the fretting shore line; the village, with its smart obtrusiveness toned by distance; and the infinite reach of the ocean beyond – these all enter into the composition. Well, if one has a "stake in the soil" just here, what is the harm in coming to drive it a little once a year, and to enjoy the luxury of wiping out such scores as are run up on the debit side of the account? Farming for dividends is a prosy business; but farming with a discount may have a world of sentiment in it.

Have you quite answered the question yet, whether the instinct of certain animals is not reason? Here are a dozen quadrupedal friends that can demonstrate the fact that they have something more than instinct. There is that honest old roan horse coming from the side-hill for his lump of sugar. He knows well enough that he is not entitled to it now. He is only coming to try his chances. But give him an hour under the saddle, then turn him out and see if he will not get it. Forgetting once to give him his parting lump, he came back again at midnight from the field, and, thrusting his head into an open window, whinnied such a blast that every inmate of the farm-house bolted from bed. He got his sugar, but with a look of injured innocence; and ever since has been dealt with in good faith. Charley is something of a sportsman, in his way. In the autumn you have only to get on his back with a gun, and he trudges off to places where the quails come out from covert by hundreds into the little openings in the chaparral. The horse will edge up very near to them; when he drops his head, that is his signal to fire. If lithe enough, you will pick them up without leaving the saddle. If you get down to gather up the game he will wait. He will go on in his own way, and discover the birds long before you can, dropping his head as a signal at just the right moment. You may call this horse sense, but it is horse reason – so near akin to human reason that there might be some trouble in tracing the dividing line. So much for this old cob, who smuggles his honest head under your coat for sugar, knowing well enough that he has not earned it.

Another horse, now dead and happy, I hope, in the other world, stopped one dark night, when half-way down a steep and dangerous hill. There was a neighbor, with wife and babies, in the carriage. The horse would not budge an inch (not under the whip), but turned his head around, declaring, as plainly as a horse could, that there was danger. The hold-back straps had broken, and the pressure of the carriage against his haunches, which sustained the entire load from the top of the hill, had started the blood cruelly; yet there he stood, resolutely holding back wife and babies from destruction, choosing even to suffer the indignities of the lash, rather than that injury should come to one of his precious charge. Did that horse have reason? I rather think so; and that he only needed articulation to have made a remonstrance quite as much to the point as that memorable one made by Balaam's ass.

There is that great mastiff, yawning so lazily, with power to hold an ox at his will, or to throttle a man. But no man could abuse him as that little child does every day. He understands well enough that that lump of animated dough has not arrived at years of discretion, and so he submits to all manner of cruelties with perfect patience. How, with mere instinct, does he find out that this child is not yet a "moral agent," and that all these pinchings, and pluckings, and brandings with a hot poker are the irresponsible freaks of the young rascal, who can get off harmless by pleading the Baby Act? This honest dog would die for that little child who abuses him every day. But let a "Greaser" come to take so much as one Brahma pullet from the roost, and he has him by the throat. Does instinct account for this clear perception of right and wrong?

Some clever ways he has, also, of winning favor. He has got it into his head that a certain black cat, that sleeps in any little patch of sunlight on the kitchen floor, is a nuisance, and he has taken a contract to abate it. But, at the same time, he is on such friendly terms with pussy that he would not hurt her for the world. Now a cat knows, by instinct, how to carry her kittens and not hurt them. But how did this dog find out that a cat can be carried safely and comfortably by the nape of her neck? Very gently he takes up pussy thus by her neck, carries her off a quarter of a mile or so from the farm-house, sets her down, and then comes back and balances the account with a crust of bread, or any odd fragment of meat, by way of lunch. On one occasion puss got back to the house before him. It bothered him that the case amounted so nearly to a "breach of contract." Taking puss once more by the neck, he carried her across a creek, and, setting her down on the other side, returned with an air of profound satisfaction. He got an extra lunch that day. But how did the dog know that a cat has a mortal aversion to crossing a stream of water? If that dog had no more than mere instinct, pray, what is reason?

His "predecessor" was a foolish dog, not more than "half-witted." But even his canine idiocy gave way to gleams of reason. He became an expert at driving cattle which trespassed on the farm. If the herd scattered, he singled out the leader, laid hold of his tail, and steered him as well as a yachtman could steer his craft through an intricate channel. After two or three steers had been piloted in this way, the rest would follow the leaders. The dog had hit upon the most economical plan with respect to time and the distance to be traversed. But, one day, in managing a vicious mustang-ox, his patience was sorely tried. Jerking him suddenly into the right path, his tail parted! The whole bovine steering-apparatus had given way, as completely as a ship's rudder in a storm. The dog never could quite comprehend the case. He took himself to his kennel, and would never drive cattle afterward. In fact, he was never the same dog after that catastrophe. Only instinct, you say? But then, if there had been an asylum for canine idiots, that dog would have been entitled to a ticket of admission. His exceptional foolishness confirms our theory.

Years ago, a seven-year-old brought home an insignificant little mongrel – a mere puppy – and pleaded so earnestly for its toleration that the maternal judgment was quite overcome. "Chip" was always a nuisance, but understood more of human speech than any dog "on record." If the plans of the day were discussed in his hearing, he comprehended the principal movements to be made. If the plan excluded his company he knew it, and stole away a half-hour in advance, always selecting the right road, and putting in his mute plea for forbearance in just the nick of time to make it available. Half a dozen times was that dog given away. Yet he always knew the day on which the transfer was to be made, and on that particular day he could never be found. Now, does a dog that understands the significance of human speech, without a motion or gesture – not only interpreting but connecting a series of ideas, so as to comprehend, in advance, plans and movements – find out all these things by mere instinct? You may limit and qualify the term, but it is reason, after all.

Train a fox ever so much, and you cannot develop anything in him but the meanest instincts. He will never be grateful, and never honest, nor can any terms of friendship be established with him. His traditional cunning is a hateful dishonesty. After nearly a year of tuition on a young gray fox, he was never advanced to any respectable degree of intelligence. He would lie at the mouth of his kennel for hours to confiscate any old hen who happened to pass with a brood of chickens, disdaining, the while, to seize any plump young rooster that passed within reach, because his diabolical instinct was to work the greatest possible amount of mischief. After making a hundred young chickens orphans, he broke his chain one night and left for the forest. The thief came back a few nights afterward to make more orphans. That gray pelt tacked up on the rear of the barn is his obituary.

A series of brilliant experiments that were to have been made on a young rattlesnake turned out not a whit more satisfactory. The reptile was not "raised" just here, but was presented by a friend. His teeth were to have been drawn, after which various observations were to have been made concerning his tastes and habits, and particularly his disposition when not provoked. There was a prospect of making an honest reptile of him. He was put in an empty barrel for the night; but next morning two half-breed Shanghaes had him, one by the tail and the other by the head. He parted about midway, each miserable rooster swallowing his half, and that without even the excuse of a morbid appetite. Since that time I have never been able to hate a young rattlesnake half as much as that detestable breed of Shanghaes.

If one is not sick unto death, what more effectual medication can be found than the sun, and the south wind, and the all-embracing earth? The children of the poor are healthy, because they sprout out of the very dirt. The sun dispels humors, enriches the blood; and the winds execute a sanitary commission for these neglected ones. They live because they are of the earth – earthy. The experiment of training a race of attenuated cherubs in the shade, and making them martyrs to clean aprons and clean dickeys, is a failure. There is a vast amount of post mortem doggerel that never would have been written if the cherubs had only made dirt-pies, and had eaten freely of them. Observe the strong tendency in men, even of culture, to court the wildness and rude energy of savage life. Let one sleep on the ground, in a mild climate, for three months, and even the man who reads Homer is content, often, to sleep there the rest of his lifetime. It is better to tame the savage rather cautiously, and with some reserve, for if he be eliminated wholly, the best relations with Nature are broken off. Evermore we are seeking for something among books and pictures, and in the babblings of polite society, that we do not find. When the blood is thin, and the body has become spiritualized, then it is easy to ascend to the clouds, as balloons go up, and hold high discourse; while the world, under our feet, teeming with its myriad lives, pulsating even to the smallest dust, and all glorified, if we will behold it, is not taken into fellowship, its speech interpreted nor its remedial forces marshaled as friends, to back our halting and troubled humanity. It has taken almost six thousand years to find out that a handful of dry earth will heal the most cruel wound. In the day of our mortal hurt we do but go back to the earth, believing that in the ages to come we shall go forth again, eternally renewed.

There are islands in the Pacific where birds and beasts, and every living thing, are free from fear of, or even a suspicion of wrong, from man. But where civilization is introduced, there is a bridgeless gulf between us and all orders of existence beneath. There is a half-articulate protest coming up, that this thing called modern civilization is treacherous, cruel, and dishonest. For a century its evangels have proclaimed its mission of love. But humanity has wrestled with its own kind more fiercely than ever before. It is decent enough to kill each other, if done according to some conventional code. But it is vulgar to eat our enemies; and so the custom, in polite society, has fallen into disuse.

Is it a wonder that all animate nature is accusatory and suspicious? Little by little we win it back to our confidence. The birds that were silent and moody, because of our intrusion, give, after a while, little fragments of song, and hop down on the lower branches, holding inquisitory councils. A lizard runs along upon a fallen tree, each time getting a little nearer; he has the handsomest of eyes, but not a good facial expression; yet so lithe and nimble, and improves so on acquaintance that we shall soon be friends. Darting his tongue through an insect, he comes a little nearer, as though he would ask, "Do you take your prey in that way?" Two orioles have swung up their hammock to the swaying branch of a chestnut oak. They do not swing from the madrono, because its branches are too stiff and unyielding. They have been in trouble for half an hour. The robins were in trouble earlier in the day; a dozen of them went after a butcher-bird, and whipped him honestly and handsomely. There is a little brown owl, sitting on a dry limb, not a hundred yards off. He came into the world with a sort of antediluvian gravity that never bodes any good. If the solemn bird could only sing, he would allay suspicion at once. Never has a song-bird a bloody beak. Your solemn-visaged men of frigid propriety, out of whose joyless natures a song or a laugh never breaks, can thrust their talons into human prey, if but occasion only serve, as this owl will into some poor bird just at the going down of the sun.

The bees come and go sluggishly, either because there is an opiate in the sweets of the wild poppy, which flames on the hill-side, or because there is no winter season here demanding great reserves of honey. Nearly all of them turn vagabonds and robbers in this country. The line of departure is toward a redwood, which is dry at the top, a knot-hole evidently serving for ingress and egress. If their own stores fail, they will go to some tame hive and fight their more honest neighbors and plunder all their reserves. Even a bee-hive is no longer a symbol of lawful industry, since the bees have become knaves, and do not even rob in a chivalrous way. But they, in turn, will be despoiled by some vagabond who has carved his initials on every "suspected" tree hereabout. It is a world of reprisals after all. The strong prey upon the weak; and they, in turn, after passing virtuous resolutions of indignant dissent, spoil those who are weaker still. It is a hard necessity. But how can the fox do without the hare, the hawk without a thrush, or he without a beetle, or the beetle without his fly? Strong nations capture the weak; and there are weak and pitiful races of men, with no force or vitality to found nations and dynasties. These only wait to be plucked up by the stronger, as so much human rubbish waiting for flood and flame. High-breeding may degenerate races. Your thoroughbred cattle, however, take the premiums at the great fairs of the world. It is not necessary that the ancestral pedigree should be a long one. But so far as men and women are thoroughbred with respect to muscle and brain, will they, consciously or otherwise, carry with them the sceptre of dominion and conquest. They will crowd out inferior races, either by sheer force or by some trick of diplomacy. An Indian exchanging territory for blankets, or sending his arrow against an iron-clad, finds it a losing business always. We write him up handsomely in romances, but extinguish him cruelly with rifle and sabre.

There was a halo lingering about the dome of the old Mission Church, in the distance; its cross was glorified just before the sun rested its disk upon the ocean. The hard outlines of the mountains softened, and took on a purple hue; the white doves came down out of the clouds, and clustered about the gables; a light flickered like a fire-fly in the light-house half a league beyond the church, and another from a window of the farm-house near by. That skipper, wide off, may take his bearings from the light on the shore. But at night-fall, the wide-spreading roof is more hospitable that even this branching madrono. And there is no philosophy that could not be improved by June butter, redolent of white clover, with a supplement of cream half an inch thick.