He was a splendid bird, a thoroughbred
“Black-breasted Red” game-cock, his gorgeous
plumage hard as mail, silken with perfect condition,
and glowing like a flame against the darkness of the
spruce forest. His snaky head-the
comb and wattles had been trimmed close, after the
mode laid down for his aristocratic kind-was
sharp and keen, like a living spear-point. His
eyes were fierce and piercing, ready ever to meet the
gaze of bird, or beast, or man himself, with the unwinking
challenge of their full, arrogant stare.
Perched upon a stump a few yards from
the railway line, he turned that bold stare now, with
an air of unperturbed superciliousness, upon the wreck
of the big freight-car from which he had just escaped.
He had escaped by a miracle, but little effect had
that upon his bold and confident spirit. The
ramshackle, overladen freight train, labouring up
the too-steep gradient, had broken in two, thanks to
a defective coupler, near the top of the incline a
mile and a half away. The rear cars-heavy
box-cars-had, of course, run back, gathering
a terrific momentum as they went. The rear brakeman,
his brakes failing to hold, had discreetly jumped
before the speed became too great. At the foot
of the incline a sharp curve had proved too much for
the runaways to negotiate. With a screech of
tortured metal they had jumped the track, and gone
crashing down the high embankment. One car, landing
on a granite boulder, had split apart like a cleft
melon. The light crate in which our game-cock,
a pedigree bird, was being carried to a fancier in
the nearest town, some three score miles away, had
survived by its very lightness. But its door
had been snapped open. The cock walked out deliberately,
uttered a long, low krr-rr-ee of ironic comment
upon the disturbance, hopped delicately over the tangle
of boxes and crates and agricultural implements, and
flew to the top of the nearest stump. There he
shook himself, his plumage being disarrayed, though
his spirit was not. He flapped his wings.
Then, eyeing the wreckage keenly, he gave a shrill,
triumphant crow, which rang through the early morning
stillness of the forest like a challenge. He felt
that the smashed car, so lately his prison, was a
foe which he had vanquished by his own unaided prowess.
His pride was not altogether unnatural.
The place where he stood preening
the red glory of his plumage was in the very heart
of the wilderness. The only human habitation within
a dozen miles in either direction was a section-man’s
shanty, guarding a siding and a rusty water-tank.
The woods-mostly spruce in that region,
with patches of birch and poplar-had been
gone over by the lumbermen some five years before,
and still showed the ravages of the insatiable axe.
Their narrow “tote-roads,” now deeply mossed
and partly overgrown by small scrub, traversed the
lonely spaces in every direction. One of these
roads led straight back into the wilderness from the
railway-almost from the stump whereon the
red cock had his perch.
The cock had no particular liking
for the neighbourhood of the accident, and when his
fierce, inquiring eye fell upon this road, he decided
to investigate, hoping it might lead him to some flock
of his own kind, over whom he would, as a matter of
course, promptly establish his domination. That
there would be other cocks there, already in charge,
only added to his zest for the adventure. He was
raising his wings to hop down from his perch, when
a wide-winged shadow passed over him, and he checked
himself, glancing upwards sharply.
A foraging hawk had just flown overhead.
The hawk had never before seen a bird like the bright
figure standing on the stump, and he paused in his
flight, hanging for a moment on motionless wing to
scrutinise the strange apparition. But he was
hungry, and he considered himself more than a match
for anything in feathers except the eagle, the goshawk,
and the great horned owl. His hesitation was
but for a second, and, with a sudden mighty thrust
of his wide wings, he swooped down upon this novel
victim.
The big hawk was accustomed to seeing
every quarry he stooped at cower paralysed with terror
or scurry for shelter in wild panic. But, to his
surprise, this infatuated bird on the stump stood awaiting
him, with wings half lifted, neck feathers raised
in a defiant ruff, and one eye cocked upwards warily.
He was so surprised, in fact, that at a distance of
some dozen or fifteen feet he wavered and paused in
his downward rush. But it was surprise only,
fear having small place in his wild, marauding heart.
In the next second he swooped again and struck downwards
at his quarry with savage, steel-hard talons.
He struck but empty air. At exactly
the right fraction of the instant the cock had leapt
upwards on his powerful wings, lightly as a thistle-seed,
but swift as if shot from a catapult. He passed
straight over his terrible assailant’s back.
In passing he struck downwards with his spurs, which
were nearly three inches long, straight, and tapered
almost to a needle-point. One of these deadly
weapons found its mark, as luck would have it, fair
in the joint of the hawk’s shoulder, putting
the wing clean out of action.
The marauder turned completely over
and fell in a wild flutter to the ground, the cock,
at the same time, alighting gracefully six or eight
feet away and wheeling like a flash to meet a second
attack. The hawk, recovering with splendid nerve
from the amazing shock of his overthrow, braced himself
upright on his tail by the aid of the one sound wing-the
other wing trailing helplessly-and faced
his strange adversary with open beak and one clutching
talon uplifted.
The cock, fighting after the manner
of his kind, rushed in to within a couple of feet
of his foe and there paused, balanced for the next
stroke or parry, legs slightly apart, wings lightly
raised, neck feathers ruffed straight out, beak lowered
and presented like a rapier point. Seeing that
his opponent made no demonstration, but simply waited,
watching him with eyes as hard and bright and dauntless
as his own, he tried to provoke him to a second attack.
With scornful insolence he dropped his guard and pecked
at a twig or a grass blade, jerking the unconsidered
morsel aside and presenting his point again with lightning
swiftness.
The insult, however, was lost upon
the hawk, who had no knowledge of the cock’s
duelling code. He simply waited, motionless as
the stump beside him.
The cock, perceiving that taunt and
insolence were wasted, now began to circle warily
toward the left, as if to take his opponent in the
flank. The hawk at once shifted front to face
him. But this was the side of his disabled wing.
The sprawling member would not move, would not get
out of the way. In the effort to manage it, he
partly lost his precarious balance. The cock
saw his advantage instantly. He dashed in like
a feathered and flaming thunderbolt, leaping upwards
and striking downwards with his destroying heels.
The hawk was hurled over backwards, with one spur
through his throat, the other through his lungs.
As he fell he dragged his conqueror down with him,
and one convulsive but blindly-clutching talon ripped
away a strip of flesh and feathers from the victor’s
thigh. There was a moment’s flapping, a
few delicate red feathers floated off upon the morning
air, then the hawk lay quite still, and the red cock,
stepping haughtily off the body of his foe, crowed
long and shrill, three times, as if challenging any
other champions of the wilderness to come and dare
a like fate.
For a few minutes he stood waiting
and listening for an answer to his challenge.
As no answer came, he turned, without deigning to glance
at his slain foe, and stalked off, stepping daintily,
up the old wood-road and into the depths of the forest.
To the raw, red gash in his thigh he paid no heed
whatever.
Having no inkling of the fact that
the wilderness, silent and deserted though it seemed,
was full of hostile eyes and unknown perils, he took
no care at all for the secrecy of his going. Indeed,
had he striven for concealment, his brilliant colouring,
so out of key with the forest gloom, would have made
it almost impossible. Nevertheless, his keenness
of sight and hearing, his practised and unsleeping
vigilance as protector of his flock, stood him in
good stead, and made up for his lack of wilderness
lore. It was with an intense interest and curiosity,
rather than with any apprehension, that his bold eyes
questioned everything on either side of his path through
the dark spruce woods. Sometimes he would stop
to peck the bright vermilion bunches of the pigeon-berry,
which here and there starred the hillocks beside the
road. But no matter how interesting he found
the novel and delicious fare, his vigilance never
relaxed. It was, indeed, almost automatic.
The idea lurking in his subconscious processes was
probably that he might at any moment be seen by some
doughty rival of his own kind, and challenged to the
great game of mortal combat. But whatever the
object of his watchfulness, it served him as well
against the unknown as it could have done against
expected foes.
Presently he came to a spot where
an old, half-rotted stump had been torn apart by a
bear hunting for wood-ants. The raw earth about
the up-torn roots tempted the wanderer to scratch
for grubs. Finding a fat white morsel, much too
dainty to be devoured alone, he stood over it and
began to call kt-kt-kt, kt-kt-kt, kt-kt-kt
in his most alluring tones, hoping that some coy young
hen would come stealing out of the underbrush in response
to his gallant invitation. There was no such
response; but as he peered about hopefully, he caught
sight of a sinister, reddish-yellow shape creeping
towards him behind the shelter of a withe-wood bush.
He gulped down the fat grub, and stood warily eyeing
the approach of this new foe.
It looked to him like a sharp-nosed,
bushy-tailed yellow dog-a very savage and
active one. He was not afraid, but he knew himself
no match for a thoroughly ferocious dog of that size.
This one, it was clear, had evil designs upon him.
He half crouched, with wings loosed and every muscle
tense for the spring.
The next instant the fox pounced at
him, darting through the green edges of the withe-wood
bush with most disconcerting suddenness. The cock
sprang into the air, but only just in time, for the
fox, leaping up nimbly at him with snapping jaws,
captured a mouthful of glossy tail feathers.
The cock alighted on a branch overhead, some seven
or eight feet from the ground, whipped around, stretched
his neck downwards, and eyed his assailant with a
glassy stare. “Kr-rr-rr-eee?” he
murmured softly, as if in sarcastic interrogation.
The fox, exasperated at his failure, and hating, above
all beasts, to be made a fool of, glanced around to
see if there were any spectators. Then, with an
air of elaborate indifference, he pawed a feather
from the corner of his mouth and trotted away as if
he had just remembered something.
He had not gone above thirty yards
or so, when the cock flew down again to the exact
spot where he had been scratching. He pretended
to pick up another grub, all the time keeping an eye
on the retiring foe. He crowed with studied insolence;
but the fox, although that long and shrill defiance
must have seemed a startling novelty, gave no sign
of having heard it. The cock crowed again, with
the same lack of result. He kept on crowing until
the fox was out of sight. Then he returned coolly
to his scratching. When he had satisfied his
appetite for fat white grubs, he flew up again to
his safe perch and fell to pruning his feathers.
Five minutes later the fox reappeared, creeping up
with infinite stealth from quite another direction.
The cock, however, detected his approach at once,
and proclaimed the fact with another mocking crow.
Disgusted and abashed, the fox turned in his tracks
and crept away to stalk some less sophisticated quarry.
The wanderer, for all his fearlessness,
was wise. He suspected that the vicious yellow
dog with the bushy tail might return yet again to the
charge. For a time, therefore, he sat on his perch,
digesting his meal and studying with keen, inquisitive
eyes his strange surroundings. After ten minutes
or so of stillness and emptiness, the forest began
to come alive. He saw a pair of black-and-white
woodpeckers running up and down the trunk of a half-dead
tree, and listened with tense interest to their loud
rat-tat-tattings. He watched the shy wood-mice
come out from their snug holes under the tree-roots,
and play about with timorous gaiety and light rustlings
among the dead leaves. He scrutinised with appraising
care a big brown rabbit which came bounding in a leisurely
fashion down the tote-road and sat up on his hindquarters
near the stump, staring about with its mild, bulging
eyes, and waving its long ears this way and that,
to question every minutest wilderness sound; and he
decided that the rabbit, for all its bulk and apparent
vigour of limb, would not be a dangerous opponent.
In fact, he thought of hopping down from his perch
and putting the big innocent to flight, just to compensate
himself for having had to flee from the fox.
But while he was meditating this venture,
the rabbit went suddenly leaping off at a tremendous
pace, evidently in great alarm. A few seconds
later a slim little light-brownish creature, with short
legs, long, sinuous body, short, triangular head,
and cruel eyes that glowed like fire, came into view,
following hard upon the rabbit’s trail.
It was nothing like half the rabbit’s size,
but the interested watcher on the branch overhead
understood at once the rabbit’s terror.
He had never seen a weasel before, but he knew that
the sinuous little beast with the eyes of death would
be as dangerous almost as the fox. He noted that
here was another enemy to look out for-to
be avoided, if possible, to be fought with the utmost
wariness if fighting should be forced upon him.
Not long after the weasel had vanished,
the cock grew tired of waiting, and restless to renew
the quest for the flock on which his dreams were set.
He started by flying from tree to tree, still keeping
along the course of the tote-road. But after
he had covered perhaps a half-mile in this laborious
fashion, he gave it up and hopped down again into the
road. Here he went now with new caution, but with
the same old arrogance of eye and bearing. He
went quickly, however, for the gloom of the spruce
wood had grown oppressive to him, and he wanted open
fields and the unrestricted sun.
He had not gone far when he caught
sight of a curious-looking animal advancing slowly
down the path to meet him. It was nearly as big
as the rabbit, but low on the legs; and instead of
leaping along, it crawled with a certain heavy deliberation.
Its colour was a dingy, greyish black-and-white, and
its short black head was crowned with what looked
like a heavy iron-grey pompadour brushed well back.
The cock stood still, eyeing its approach suspiciously.
It did not look capable of any very swift demonstration,
but he was on his guard.
When it had come within three or four
yards of him, he said “Kr-rr-rr-eee!”
sharply, just to see what it would do, at the same
time lowering his snaky head and ruffing out his neck
feathers in challenge. The stranger seemed then
to notice him for the first time, and instantly, to
the cock’s vast surprise, it enlarged itself
to fully twice its previous size. Its fur, which
was now seen to be quills rather than fur, stood up
straight on end all over its head and body, and the
quills were two or three inches in length. At
this amazing spectacle the cock involuntarily backed
away several paces. The stranger came straight
on, however, without hastening his deliberate steps
one jot. The cock waited, maintaining his attitude
of challenge, till not more than three or four feet
separated him from the incomprehensible apparition.
Then he sprang lightly over it and turned in a flash,
expecting the stranger to turn also and again confront
him. The stranger, however, did nothing of the
kind, but simply continued stolidly on his way, not
even troubling to look round. Such stolidity
was more than the cock could understand, having never
encountered a porcupine before. He stared after
it for some moments. Then he crowed scornfully,
turned about, and resumed his lonely quest.
A little further on, to his great
delight, he came out into a small clearing with a
log cabin in the centre of it. A house! It
was associated in his mind with an admiring, devoted
flock of hens, and rivals to be ignominiously routed,
and harmless necessary humans whose business it was
to supply unlimited food. He rushed forward eagerly,
careless as to whether he should encounter love or
war.
Alas, the cabin was deserted!
Even to his inexperienced eye it was long deserted.
The door hung on one hinge, half open. The one
small window had no glass in it. Untrodden weeds
grew among the rotting chips up to and across the
threshold. The roof-a rough affair
of poles and bark-sagged in the middle,
just ready to fall in at the smallest provocation.
A red squirrel, his tail carried jauntily over his
back, sat on the topmost peak of it and shrilled high
derision at the wanderer as he approached.
The cock was acquainted with squirrels,
and thought less than nothing of them. Ignoring
the loud chatter, he tip-toed around the cabin, dejected
but still inquisitive. Returning at length to
the doorway, he peered in, craning his neck and uttering
a low kr-rr. Finally, with head held high,
he stalked in. The place was empty, save for a
long bench with a broken leg and a joint of rust-eaten
stove-pipe. Along two of the walls ran a double
tier of bunks, in which the lumbermen had formerly
slept. The cock stalked all around the place,
prying in every corner and murmuring softly to himself.
At last he flew up to the highest bunk, perched upon
the edge of it, flapped his wings, and crowed repeatedly,
as if announcing to the wilderness at large that he
had taken possession. This ceremony accomplished,
he flew down again, stalked out into the sunlight,
and fell to scratching among the chips with an air
of assured possession. And all the while the
red squirrel kept on hurling shrill, unheeded abuse
at him, resenting him as an intruder in the wilds.
Whenever the cock found a particularly
choice grub or worm or beetle, he would hold it aloft
in his beak, then lay it down and call loudly kt-kt-kt-kt-kt-kt,
as if hoping thus to lure some flock of hens to the
fair domain which he had seized. He had now dropped
his quest, and was trusting that his subjects would
come to him. That afternoon his valiant calls
caught the ear of a weasel-possibly the
very one which he had seen in the morning trailing
the panic-stricken rabbit. The weasel came rushing
upon him at once, too ferocious in its blood-lust for
any such emotions as surprise or curiosity, and expecting
an easy conquest. The cock saw it coming, and
knew well the danger. But he was now on his own
ground, responsible for the protection of an imaginary
flock. He faced the peril unwavering. Fortunately
for him, the weasel had no idea whatever of a fighting-cock’s
method of warfare. When the cock evaded the deadly
rush by leaping straight at it and over it, instead
of dodging aside or turning tail, the weasel was nonplussed
for just a fraction of a second, and stood snarling.
In that instant of hesitation the cock’s keen
spur struck it fairly behind the ear, and drove clean
into the brain. The murderous little beast stiffened
out, rolled gently over upon its side, and lay there
with the soundless snarl fixed upon its half-opened
jaws. Surprised at such an easy victory, the cock
spurred the carcase again, just to make sure of it.
Then he kicked it to one side, crowed, of course,
and stared around wistfully for some appreciation
of his triumph. He could not know with what changed
eyes the squirrel-who feared weasels more
than anything else on earth-was now regarding
him.
The killing of so redoubtable an adversary
as the weasel must have become known, in some mysterious
fashion, for thenceforward no more of the small marauders
of the forest ventured to challenge the new lordship
of the clearing. For a week the cock ruled his
solitude unquestioned, very lonely, but sleeplessly
alert, and ever hoping that followers of his own kind
would come to him from somewhere. In time, doubtless,
his loneliness would have driven him forth again upon
his quest; but Fate had other things in store for
him.
Late one afternoon a grizzled woodsman
in grey homespun, and carrying a bundle swung from
the axe over his shoulder, came striding up to the
cabin. The cock, pleased to see a human being
once more, stalked forth from the cabin door to meet
him. The woodsman was surprised at the sight
of what he called a “reel barn-yard rooster”
away off here in the wilds, but he was too tired and
hungry to consider the question carefully. His
first thought was that there would be a pleasant addition
to his supper of bacon and biscuits. He dropped
his axe and bundle, and made a swift grab at the unsuspecting
bird. The latter dodged cleverly, ruffed his
neck feathers with an angry kr-rr-rr, hopped
up, and spurred the offending hand severely.
The woodsman straightened himself
up, taken by surprise, and sheepishly shook the blood
from his hand.
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
he muttered, eyeing the intrepid cock with admiration.
“You’re some rooster, you are! I guess
you’re all right. Guess I deserved that,
for thinkin’ of wringin’ the neck o’
sech a handsome an’ gritty bird as you, an’
me with plenty o’ good bacon in me pack.
Guess we’ll call it square, eh?”
He felt in his pocket for some scraps
of biscuits, and tossed them to the cock, who picked
them up greedily and then strutted around him, plainly
begging for more. The biscuit was a delightful
change after an unvarying diet of grubs and grass.
Thereafter he followed his visitor about like his
shadow, not with servility, of course, but with a certain
condescending arrogance which the woodsman found hugely
amusing.
Just outside the cabin door the woodsman
lit a fire to cook his evening rasher and brew his
tin of tea. The cock supped with him, striding
with dignity to pick up the scraps which were thrown
to him, and then resuming his place at the other side
of the fire. By the time the man was done, dusk
had fallen; and the cock, chuckling contentedly in
his throat, tip-toed into the cabin, flew up to the
top bunk, and settled himself on his perch for the
night. He had always been taught to expect benefits
from men, and he felt that this big stranger who had
fed him so generously would find him a flock to preside
over on the morrow.
After a long smoke beside his dying
fire, till the moon came up above the ghostly solitude,
the woodsman turned in to sleep in one of the lower
bunks, opposite to where the cock was roosting.
He had heaped an armful of bracken and spruce branches
into the bunk before spreading his blanket. And
he slept very soundly.
Even the most experienced of woodsmen
may make a slip at times. This one, this time,
had forgotten to make quite sure that his fire was
out. There was no wind when he went to bed, but
soon afterwards a wind arose, blowing steadily toward
the cabin. It blew the darkened embers to a glow,
and little, harmless-looking flames began eating their
way over the top layer of tinder-dry chips to the
equally dry wall of the cabin.
The cock was awakened by a bright
light in his eyes. A fiery glow, beyond the reddest
of sunrises, was flooding the cabin. Long tongues
of flame were licking about the doorway. He crowed
valiantly, to greet this splendid, blazing dawn.
He crowed again and yet again, because he was anxious
and disturbed. As a sunrise, this one did not
act at all according to precedent.
The piercing notes aroused the man,
who was sleeping heavily. In one instant he was
out of his bunk and grabbing up his blanket and his
pack. In the next he had plunged out through
the flaming doorway, and thrown down his armful at
a safe distance, cursing acidly at such a disturbance
to the most comfortable rest he had enjoyed for a week.
From within the doomed cabin came
once more the crow of the cock, shrilling dauntlessly
above the crackle and venomous hiss of the flames.
“Gee whizz!” muttered
the woodsman, or, rather, that may be taken as the
polite equivalent of his untrammelled backwoods expletive.
“That there red rooster’s game. Ye
can’t leave a pardner like that to roast!”
With one arm shielding his face, he
dashed in again, grabbed the cock by the legs, and
darted forth once more into the sweet, chill air, none
the worse except for frizzled eyelashes and an unceremonious
trimming of hair and beard. The cock, highly
insulted, was flapping and pecking savagely, but the
man soon reduced him to impotence, if not submission,
holding him under one elbow while he tied his armed
heels together, and then swaddling him securely in
his coat.
“There,” said he, “I
guess we’ll travel together from this out, pardner.
Ye’ve sure saved my life; an’ to think
I had the notion, for a minnit, o’ makin’
a meal offen ye! I’ll give ye a good
home, anyways, an’ I guess ye’ll lick
the socks offen every other rooster in the whole
blame Settlement!”