Side by side, in the position in which
they were accustomed to labour at the yoke-Star
on the off side, Buck on the nigh-they stood
waiting in the twilight beside the pasture bars.
From the alder swamp behind the pasture, coolly fragrant
under the first of the dew-fall, came the ethereal
fluting of a hermit thrush, most tender and most poignant
of all bird songs. In the vault of the pale sky-pale
violet washes of thin colour over unfathomable deeps
of palest green-a wide-swooping night-hawk
sounded at intervals its long, twanging note, like
a stricken harpstring. The dark spruce woods
beyond the barn began to give off their aromatic balsam-scent
upon the evening air. A frog croaked from somewhere
under the alders where the hermit was at his fluting.
One of the oxen at last began to low softly and anxiously.
It was long past watering-time. Immediately his
mate repeated the complaint, but on a harsher, more
insistent key. The watering trough, full to the
brim, was there in full view before them, just at
the other side of the cabin. It was an unheard-of
thing that their master should not come at sundown
to lower the bars and let them drink their fill.
They were a splendid pair, these two
steers, and splendidly matched. Both dark red,
deep and massive in the shoulder, with short, straight
horns, and each with a clean white star in the centre
of his broad forehead, they were so exactly alike
in all external particulars, that the uninitiated
eye would have been puzzled to distinguish them.
Both stood also with the patient, bowed necks of those
who have toiled long under the burden of the yoke.
But to one at all acquainted with animals, at all
versed in the psychology of the animal mind, the difference
between the two was obvious. The temperaments
that looked out from their big, dark eyes were different.
The very patience of their bowed heads was different
in expression. The patience of Star, the off ox,
was an accepting, contented patience. Curses,
blows, the jabs of the ox-goad, he took mildly, as
a matter of course, and, being his master’s
favourite, he got just as few of them as the exigencies
of backwoods ploughing and hauling would permit.
But with Buck it was far otherwise. In his eyes
flickered always the spark of a spirit unsubdued.
He had a side glance, surly yet swift, that put the
observant on their guard. He never accepted the
goad without a snort of resentment, a threatening
shake of his short, sharp horns. And he had command
of a lightning kick which had taught discretion to
more than one worrying cur. Yet he was valued,
even while distrusted, by his owner, because he was
intelligent, well-trained, and a glutton for work,
both quicker than his docile yoke-fellow and more
untiring.
Between the two great red steers there
was that close attachment which has been so often
observed between animals long accustomed to working
in the same harness. They become a habit to each
other, and seem, therefore, essential to each other’s
peace of mind. But on the part of Buck it was
something more than this. Ill-tempered and instinctively
hostile toward every one else, man or beast, he showed
signs of an active devotion to his tranquil yoke-fellow,
and would sometimes spend hours licking Star’s
neck while the latter went on chewing the cud in complacent
acceptance of the attention.
The twilight gathered deeper about
the lonely backwoods clearing. The night-hawk,
a soaring and swooping speck in the pallid spaces of
the sky, became invisible, though his strange note
still twanged sonorously from time to time. The
hermit hushed his fluting in the alder thicket.
An owl hooted solemnly from somewhere back in the spruce
woods. But still the owner of the oxen did not
come to lower the bars and give admittance to the
brimming trough. He was lying dead beside the
brawling trout-brook, a mile or so down the tote-road,
his neck broken by a flying branch from a tree which
he had felled too carelessly. His dog was standing
over the sprawled body, whining and pawing at it in
distracted solicitude.
To the two thirsty oxen the cool smell
of the waiting trough was cruelly tantalizing.
To one of them it speedily became irresistible.
Buck was not, by instinct, any great respecter of
bounds or barriers. He began hooking impatiently
at the bars, while Star gazed at him in placid wonder.
The bars were solid and well set, and Buck seemed to
realize almost at once that there was little to be
done in that quarter. Feeling for a weak spot,
he worked his way along beyond them to the first panel
of the fence. It was the ordinary rough “snake”
of the backwoods clearing, a zigzag structure of rough
poles, supported at the angles by crossed stakes.
Never very substantial, it had been broken and somewhat
carelessly mended at this particular point. The
top rail lifted easily under the thrust of Buck’s
aimlessly tossing horn. It fell down again at
once into its place in the crotch of the crossed stakes,
and, in falling, it struck the fumbling experimenter
a sharp whack across the nose.
The hot-tempered steer, already irritated,
flared up at once, and butted heavily at the fence
with his massive forehead. One of the cross-stakes,
already half-rotted through, broke at once, and the
two top rails went down with a crash. Following
up this push, he threw his ponderous weight against
the remaining rails, now left unsupported, breasted
them down almost without an effort, and went crashing
and triumphing through into the yard. His mate,
who would never himself have dreamed of such a venture
as breaking bounds, stared irresolutely for a few seconds,
then followed through the gap. And side by side
the two slaked their thirst, plunging their broad
muzzles into the cool of the trough and lifting them
to blow the drops luxuriously from their nostrils.
The impulse of Star was now to turn
back into the familiar pasture, according to custom.
But Buck, on the other hand, was used to being driven
back and that always more or less under protest.
For the first time in his memory, there was now no
one to drive him back. He had a strange, new
sense of freedom, of restraint removed. He was
accustomed to seeing a light in the cabin window about
this hour. But there was no light. The whole
place seemed empty with a new kind of emptiness.
Nothing was further from his fancy than to return to
the pasture prison which he had just broken out of.
He stood with head uplifted, as if already the galling
memory of the yoke had slipped from off his neck.
For a minute or two he stood sniffing
with wide nostrils, drinking deep the chill, keen-scented
air. It was the same air as he had been breathing
on the other side of the pasture-bars, but it smelt
very different to him. Something there was in
it which called him away irresistibly into the dark,
unfenced depths of the forest which surrounded the
clearing. He turned his great head and lowed coaxingly
to his partner, who was standing beside the gap in
the pasture fence and staring after him in placid
question. Then he started off with a brisk step
down the shadowy, pale ribbon of the road.
Star’s natural impulse, after
drinking, was to return to the familiar, comfortable
pasture; but not without his yoke-mate. The stronger
impulse ruled. With some reluctance and a good
deal of bovine wonder, he swung around and hastened
after Buck. The latter waited for him; and side
by side, as if in yoke, though with less labouring
steps, they turned off the deeply rutted highway and
moved silently down a mossed old wood road into the
glimmering dark of the forest.
A sure instinct in Buck’s feet
was leading them straight away from the Settlements,
straight into the heart of the wilderness. After
perhaps an hour the wood-road led out of the thick
forest across a little wild meadow with a shallow
brook babbling softly through it. Here the two
grazed for a time, almost belly deep in the thick-flowered
grass, while the bats flickered and zigzagged above
them, and a couple of whip-poor-wills answered each
other monotonously from opposite ends of the glade.
Then they lay down side by side to chew the cud and
to sleep, surrounded by the pungent smell of the stalks
of the wild parsnip which their huge bulks had crushed
down.
They lay in a corner of the glade,
close to the dense thickets that formed the fringe
of the woods. Unaccustomed to vigilance, neither
their eyes nor their ears were on the alert.
A lynx crept up behind them, within a dozen paces,
glared at them vindictively with its pale, malignant
moon-eyes, and then ran up a tree to get a better look
at these mighty intruders upon his hunting-ground.
His claws made a loud rattling on the bark as he climbed,
but neither of the oxen paid any attention whatever
to the sound. Of course, a lynx could not, under
any circumstances, be anything more than an object
of mild curiosity to them, but had it been a pair
of hungry panthers, they would have been equally unconscious
and unwarned. They lay with their backs to the
forest, looking out across the open, chewing lazily,
and from time to time heaving windy breaths of deep
content. Not a score of yards before their noses
a trailing weasel ran down and killed a hare.
At the cry of the victim Buck opened his half-closed
eyes and gave a snort of disapproval. But Star
paid no attention whatever to the little tragedy.
All his faculties were engrossed upon his comfort and
his cud.
A little later a prowling fox came
suddenly upon them. He was surprised to find
the pair so far from their pasture, where he had several
times observed them in the course of his wide wanderings.
His shrewd mind jumped to the idea that perhaps the
settler, their master, was out with them; and while
he had no objection whatever to the oxen-stupid,
harmless hulks in his eyes-he had the most
profound objection to their master and his gun.
He slipped back into cover, encircled the whole glade
stealthily till he picked up their trail, and satisfied
himself that they had come alone. Then he returned
and sat down on his tail deliberately in front of
them, cocking his head to one side, as if inviting
them to explain their presence.
Star returned his gaze with placid
indifference, but Buck was annoyed. In his eyes
the fox was a little sharp-nosed dog with a bushy tail
and an exasperating smell. He hated all dogs,
but especially little ones, because they were so elusive
when they yapped at his heels. He heaved himself
up with an angry snort, and charged upon the intruder.
The fox, without losing his dignity at all, seemed
to drift easily out of reach, to this side or that,
till the ox grew tired of the futile chase. Moreover,
as the fox made no sound and no demonstration of heel-snapping,
Buck’s anger presently faded out, and he returned
to his partner’s side and lay down again.
And the fox, his curiosity satisfied, trotted away.
A little later there came a stealthy
crashing through the darkness of the underbush in
the rear. But the two oxen never turned their
heads. To them the ominous sound had no significance
whatever. A few paces behind them the crashing
came to a sudden stop. A bear, lumbering down
toward the brook-side, to grub in the soft earth for
edible roots, had caught the sound of their breathing
and chewing. He knew the sound, for he, too,
like the fox, had prowled about the pasture fence at
night. As noiselessly as a shadow he crept nearer,
till he could make out the contented pair. He
knew they belonged to the man, and it made him uneasy
to see them there, so far from where they belonged.
He sniffed the air cautiously, to see if the man was
with them. No, the man was not there, that was
soon obvious. He had no thought of attacking them;
they were much too formidable to be meddled with.
But why were they there? The circumstance was,
therefore, dangerous. Perhaps the man was designing
some sort of trap for him. He drew back cautiously,
and made off by the way he had come. He had a
wholesome respect for the man, and for all his works
and belongings.
In the first, mysterious, glassy grey
of dawn, when thin wisps of vapour clung curling among
the grass-tops, the two wanderers got up and fell to
grazing. Then Star, who was beginning to feel
homesick for old pasture fields, strayed away irresolutely
toward the road for home. Buck, however, would
have none of it. He marched off toward the brook,
splashed through, and fell to pasturing again on the
farther side. Star, not enduring to be left alone,
immediately joined him.
That day the pair pressed onward,
deeper and deeper into the wilds, Buck ever eager
on the unknown quest, Star ever reluctant, but persuaded.
As a matter of fact, had Star been resolute enough
in his reluctance, had he had the independence to
lie down and refuse to go farther, he would have gained
the day, for Buck would never have forsaken him.
But initiative ruled inertia, as is usually the case,
and Buck’s adventuring spirit had its way.
It was a rugged land, but hospitable
enough to the wanderers in this affluent late June
weather, through which Buck so confidently led the
way. The giant tangle of the forest was broken
by frequent wild meadows, and foaming streams, and
lonely little granite-bordered lakes, and stretches
of sun-steeped barren, all bronze green with blueberry
scrub. There was plenty to eat, plenty to drink,
and when the flies and the heat grew troublesome,
it was pleasant to wallow in the cold, amber-brown
pools. Even Star began to forget the home pasture,
and content himself with the freedom which he had
never craved.
How far and to what goal the urge
in Buck’s untamed heart would have carried them
before exhausting itself, there is no telling.
But he had challenged without knowledge the old, implacable
sphinx of the wilderness. And suddenly, to his
undoing, the challenge was accepted.
On the third day of their wanderings
the pair came out upon a river too deep and wide for
even Buck’s daring to attempt to cross.
The banks were steep-a succession of rocky
bluffs, broken by deep lateral bayous, and strips
of interval meadows where brooks came in through a
fringe of reeds and alders. Buck turned northward,
following the bank up stream, sometimes close to the
edge, sometimes a little way back, wheresoever the
easier path or the most tempting patches of pasturage
might seem to lead. He was searching always for
some feasible crossing, for his instinct led him always
to get over any barrier. That his path toward
the west had been barred only confirmed him in his
impulse to work westward.
Late that afternoon, as they burst
out, through thick bushes, into a little grassy glade,
they surprised a bear-cub playing with a big yellow
fungus, which he boxed and cuffed about-carefully,
so as not to break his plaything-as a kitten
boxes a ball. To Buck, of course, the playful
cub was only another dog, which might be expected to
come yapping and snapping at his heels. With
an indignant snort he charged it.
The cub, at that ominous sound, looked
up in astonishment. But when he saw the terrible
red form dashing down upon him across the grass, he
gave a squeal of terror and fled for the shelter of
the trees. He was too young, however, for any
great speed or agility, and he had none of the dog’s
artfulness in dodging. Before he could gain cover
he was overtaken. Buck’s massive front
caught him on his haunches, smashing him into the
ground. He gave one agonized squall, and then
the life was crushed out of him.
Amazed at this easy success-the
first of the kind he had ever had-but immensely
proud of himself, the great red ox drew off and eyed
his victim for a second or two, his tail lashing his
sides in angry triumph. Then he fell to goring
the small black body, and tossing it into the air,
and battering it again with his forehead as it came
down. He was taking deep vengeance for all the
yelping curs which had worried and eluded him in the
past.
In the midst of this congenial exercise
he caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of
a big black shape just hurling itself upon him.
The mother bear, a giant of her kind, had come to the
cry of her little one.
Buck whirled with amazing nimbleness
to meet the attack. He was in time to escape
the blow which would have cracked even his mighty neck,
but the long, steel-hard claws of his assailant fairly
raked off one side of his face, destroying one eye
completely. At the same time, with a shrill bellow,
he lunged forward, driving a short, punishing horn
deep into the bear’s chest and hurling her back
upon her haunches.
Dreadful as was his own injury, this
fortunate thrust gave him the advantage for the moment.
But, being unlearned in battle, he did not know enough
to follow it up. He drew back to prepare for another
charge, and paused to stamp the ground, and bellow,
and shake his horribly wounded head.
The mother, heedless of her own deep
wound, turned to sniff, whimpering, at the body of
her cub. Seeing at once that it was quite dead,
she wheeled like a flash and hurled herself again
upon the slayer. As she wheeled she came upon
Buck’s blinded side. He lunged forward once
again, mad for the struggle. But this time, half
blind as he was, he was easily eluded, for the old
bear was a skilled fighter. A monstrous weight
crashed down upon his neck, just behind the ears, and
the bright green world grew black before him.
He stumbled heavily forward on knees and muzzle, with
a choking bellow. The bear struck again, and with
the other paw tore out his throat, falling upon him
and mauling him with silent fury as he rolled over
upon his side.
Star, meanwhile, being ever slow of
wit and of purpose, had been watching with startled
eyes, unable to take in the situation, although a
strange heat was beginning to stretch his veins.
But when he saw his yoke-mate stumble forward on his
muzzle, when he heard that choking bellow of anguish,
then the unaccustomed fire found its way up into his
brain. He saw red, and, with a nimbleness far
beyond that of Buck at his swiftest, he launched himself
into the battle.
The bear, absorbed in the fulness
of her vengeance, was taken absolutely by surprise.
It was as if a ton of rock had been hurled against
her flank, rolling her over and crushing her at the
same time. In his rage the great red ox seemed
suddenly to develop an aptitude for the battle.
Twisting his head, he buried one horn deep in his adversary’s
belly, where he ripped and tore with the all-destructive
fury of a mad rhinoceros. The bear’s legs
closed convulsively about his head and shoulders,
but in the next instant they relaxed again, falling
away loosely as that ploughing horn reached and pierced
the heart. Then Star drew back, and stood shaking
his head to clear the blood out of his eyes.
For two days and nights Star stood
over his yoke-mate’s body, leaving his post
only for a few yards and for a few minutes, at long
intervals, to crop a mouthful of grass or to drink
at that cold stream which ran past the edge of the
tragic glade. On the third day two woodsmen,
passing down the river in a canoe, were surprised to
hear the lowing of an ox in that desolate place, far
from even the remotest settler’s cabin.
The lowing was persistent and appealing. They
went ashore and investigated.
At the scene which they came upon
in the sunny little glade they stood marvelling.
After a time their shrewd conjectures, initiated as
they were in all the mysteries of the wild, arrived
at a fairly accurate interpretation of it all.
“It was sure some scrap, anyhow,”
was the final conclusion of one grizzled investigator;
and “Wish’t we could ‘a’ seen
it,” of the other. Then, the big red ox,
with blood caked over head and horns, being too admired
as well as too valuable to be left behind, they decided
that one of them should stop on shore and drive him,
while the other followed slowly in the canoe.
At first Star refused stolidly to
budge from his dead comrade’s side. But
the woodsman was in winter a teamster, and what he
did not know about driving oxen was not worth knowing.
He cut a long white stick like an ox-goad, took his
place at Star’s side, gave him a firm prod in
the flank, and cried in a voice of authority:
“Haw, Bright!”
At the old command, although “Bright”
was not the right name, Star seemed once more to feel
the familiar, and to him not unpleasant, pressure
of the yoke upon his neck. He swerved obediently
to the left, lowering his head and throwing his weight
forward to start the imaginary load, and moved away
as his new master ordered. And gradually, as
he went, directed this way or that by the sharp commands
of “Gee!” or “Haw!” and the
light reminder of the goad, his grief for his yoke-fellow
began to dull its edge. It was comforting to be
once more controlled, to be snatched back into servitude
from a freedom which had proved so strenuous and so
terrible.