Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Steven desJardinsand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net
The Trail of the Sandhill Stag]
"The Track of a Mother Blacktail was suddenly joined bytwo Little Ones' Tracks."]
THE TRAIL OF THE SANDHILL STAGAND 60 DRAWINGS
BYERNEST THOMPSON SETONNaturalist to the Government of Manitoba
Author ofWild Animals I Have KnownArt Anatomy of AnimalsMammals of ManitobaBirds of Manitoba
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons New York City A.D. 1914
Copyright, 1899, byErnest Seton-Thompson
FirstImpressionOctober121899
SecondImpressionFebruary161900
ThirdImpressionDecember201900
FourthImpressionJuly161901
FifthImpressionAugust181902
SixthImpressionOctober291904
SeventhImpressionNovember301908
EighthImpressionNovember11910
NinthImpressionApril101913
TenthImpressionDecember101913
THE SCRIBNER PRESS
This Book is dedicated to the Old-timers of the Big Plain of Manitoba.
To the Reader:
These are the best days of my life. These are my golden days.
In this Book the designs for title-page, cover, and general make-up, and also the literary revision, were done by Mrs. Grace Gallatin Thompson Seton.
List of full-page Drawings
"The Track of a Mother Blacktailwas suddenly joined by two LittleOnes' Tracks" frontispiece
The Trail Spring page 14
"Wingless Birds" 22
"Sat down in the Moonlit Snow" 37
"Seven Deer, ... their Leader a wonderfulBuck" 56
"The Doe was walking slowly" 63
"Scanned the White World for his foe" 80
The Stag 89
The Trail Spring.]
I
It was a burning hot day. Yan was wandering in pursuit of birds amongthe endless groves and glades of the Sandhill wilderness aboutCarberry. The water in the numerous marshy ponds was warm with the sunheat, so Yan cut across to the trail spring, the only place in thecountry where he might find a cooling drink. As he stooped beside ithis eye fell on a small hoof-mark in the mud, a sharp and eleganttrack.
He had never seen one like it before, but it gave him a thrill, for heknew at once it was the track of a _wild deer_.
"There are no deer in those hills now," the settlers told Yan. Yetwhen the first snow came that autumn he, remembering the hoof-mark inthe mud, quietly took down his rifle and said to himself, "I am goinginto the hills every day till I bring out a deer." Yan was a tall, rawlad in the last of his teens. He was no hunter yet, but he was atireless runner, and filled with unflagging zeal. Away to the hills hewent on his quest day after day, and many a score of long white mileshe coursed, and night after night he returned to the shanty withoutseeing even a track. But the longest chase will end. On a far, hardtrip in the southern hills he came at last on the trail of a deer--dimand stale, but still a deer-trail--and again he felt a thrill as thethought came, "At the other end of that line of dimples in the snow isthe creature that made them; each one is fresher than the last, and itis only a question of time for me to come up with their maker."
At first Yan could not tell by the dim track which way the animal hadgone. But he soon found that the mark was a little sharper at one end,and rightly guessed that that was the toe; also he noticed that thespaces shortened in going up hill, and at last a clear imprint in asandy place ended all doubt. Away he went with a new fire in hisblood, and an odd prickling in his hair; away on a long, hard followthrough interminable woods and hills, with the trail growing fresheras he flew. All day he followed, and toward night it turned and ledhim homeward. On it went, soon over familiar ground, back to thesawmill, then over Mitchell's Plain, and at last into the thick poplarwoods near by, where Yan left it when it was too dark to follow. Hewas only seven miles from home, and this he easily trotted in an hour.
In the morning he was back to take it up, but instead of an oldtrack, there were now so many fresh ones, crossing and winding, thathe could not follow at all. So he prowled along haphazard, until hefound two tracks so new that he could easily trail them as before, andhe eagerly gave chase. As he sneaked along watching the tracks at hisfeet instead of the woods ahead, he was startled by two big-eared,grayish animals springing from a little glade into which he hadstumbled. They trotted to a bank fifty yards away and then turned togaze at him.
How they did seem to _look_ with their great ears! How they spellboundhim by the soft gaze that he felt rather than saw! He knew what theywere. Had he not for weeks been holding ready, preparing and hungeringfor this very sight! And yet how useless were his preparations; howwholly all his preconcepts were swept away, and a wonder-stricken
"Oh-h-h!" went softly from his throat.
As he stood and gazed, they turned their heads away, though they stillseemed to look at him with their great ears, and trotting a few stepsto a smoother place, began to bound up and down in a sort of play.They seemed to have forgotten him, and it was bewildering to see thewonderful effortless way in which, by a tiny toe-touch, they wouldrise six or eight feet in air. Yan stood fascinated by the strangeplay of the light-limbed, gray-furred creatures. There was no haste oralarm in their movements; he would watch them until they began to runaway--till they should take fright and begin the labored straining,the vast athletic bounds, he had heard of. And it was only on notingthat they were rapidly fading into the distance that he realized that_now_ they were running away, _already_ were flying for safety.
"Wingless Birds."]
Higher and higher they rose each time; gracefully their bodies swayedinward as they curved along some bold ridge, or for a long space thebuff-white scutcheons that they bore behind them seemed hanging inthe air while these wingless birds were really sailing over some deepgully.
Yan stood intensely gazing until they were out of sight, and it neveronce occurred to him to shoot.
When they were gone he went to the place where they had begun theirplay. Here was one track; where was the next? He looked all around andwas surprised to see a blank for fifteen feet; and then another blank,and on farther, another: then the blanks increased to eighteen feet,then to twenty, then to twenty-five and sometimes thirty feet. Each ofthese playful, effortless bounds covered a space of eighteen to thirtyfeet.
Gods above! They do not run at all, they fly; and once in a while comedown again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs.
* * * * *
"I'm glad they got away," said Yan. "They've shown me something to-daythat never man saw before. I know that no one else has ever seen it,or he would have told of it."
II
Yet when the morning came the old wolfish instinct was back in hisheart. "I must away to the hills," he said, "take up the trail, and bea beast of the chase once more; my wits against their wits; mystrength against their strength; and against their speed, my gun."
Oh! those glorious hills--an endless rolling stretch of sandy dunes,with lakes and woods and grassy lawns between. Life--life on everyside, and life within, for Yan was young and strong and joyed inpowers complete. "These are the best days of my life," he said, "theseare my golden days." He thought it then, and oh, how well he came toknow it in the after years!
All day at a long wolf-lope he would go and send the white hare andthe partridge flying from his path, and swing alon
g and scan theground for sign and the telltale inscript in the snow, the oldest ofall writing, more thrillful of interest by far than the finest glyphor scarab that ever Egypt gave to modern day.
But the driving snow was the wild deer's friend, as the driven snowwas his foe, and down it came that day and wiped out every trace.
The next day and the next still found Yan careering in the hills, butnever a track or sign did he see. And the weeks went by, and many arolling mile he ran, and many a bitter day and freezing night hepassed in the snow-clad hills, sometimes on a deer-trail but moreoften without; sometimes in the barren hills, and sometimes led bywoodmen's talk to far-off sheltering woods, and once or twice he sawindeed the buff-white bannerets go floating up the hills. Sometimesreports came of a great buck that frequented the timber-lands near thesawmill, and more than once Yan found his trail, but never got aglimpse of him; and the few deer there were now grew so wild with longpursuit that he had no further chances to shoot, and the huntingseason passed in one long train of failures.
Bright, unsad failures they. He seemed indeed to come backempty-handed, but he really came home laden with the best spoils ofthe chase, and he knew it more and more, as time went on, till everyday, at last, on the clear unending trail, was a glad triumphantmarch.
III
The year went by. Another season came, and Yan felt in his heart thehunter fret once more. Even had he not, the talk he heard would haveset him all afire.
It told of a mighty buck that now lived in the hills--the SandhillStag they called him. It told of his size, his speed, and the crowningglory that he bore on his brow, a marvellous growth like sculpturedbronze with gleaming ivory points.
So when the first tracking snow came, Yan set out with some comradeswho had caught a faint reflected glow of his ardor. They drove in asleigh to the Spruce Hill, then scattered to meet again at sunset. Thewoods about abounded in hares and grouse, and the powder burned allaround. But no deer-track was to be found, so Yan quietly left thewoods and set off alone for Kennedy's Plain, where last this wonderfulbuck had been seen.
After a few miles he came on a great deer-track, so large and sharpand broken by such mighty bounds that he knew it at once for the trailof the Sandhill Stag.
With a sudden rush of strength to his limbs he led away like a wolf onthe trail. And down his spine and in his hair he felt as before, andyet as never before, the strange prickling that he knew was the sameas makes the wolf's mane bristle when he hunts. He followed till nightwas near and he must needs turn, for the Spruce Hill was many milesaway.
He knew that it would be long after sunset before he could get there,and he scarcely expected that his comrades would wait for him, but hedid not care; he gloried in the independence of his strength, for hislegs were like iron and his wind was like a hound's. Ten miles wereno more to him than a mile to another man, for he could run all dayand come home fresh, and always when alone in the lone hills he feltwithin so glad a gush of wild exhilaration that his joy was full.
So when his friends, feeling sure that he could take care of himself,drove home and left him, he was glad to be left. They seemed rather topity him for imposing on himself such long, toilsome tramps. They hadno realization of what he found in those wind-swept hills. They neveronce thought what they and all their friends and every man that everlived has striven for and offered his body, his brain, his freedom,and his life to buy; what they were vainly wearing out their lives infearful, hopeless drudgery to gain, that boy was daily finding inthose hills. The bitter, biting, blizzard wind was without, but thefire of health and youth was within; and at every stride in his dailymarch, it was _happiness_ he found, and he knew it. And he smiled sucha gentle smile when he thought of those driven home in the sleighshivering and miserable, _yet pitying him_.
Oh, what a glorious sunset he saw that day on Kennedy's Plain, withthe snow dyed red and the poplar woods aglow in pink and gold! What aglorious tramp through the darkening woods as the shadows fell andthe yellow moon came up!
"These are the best days of my life," he sang. "These are my goldendays!"
And as he neared the great Spruce Hill, Yan yelled a long hurrah! "Incase they are still there," he told himself, but really for very joyof feeling all alive.
As he listened for the improbable response, he heard a faint howlingof wolves away over Kennedy's Plain. He mimicked their cry and quicklygot response, and noticed that they were gathering together, doubtlesshunting something, for now it was their hunting-cry. Nearer and nearerit came, and his howls brought ready answers from the gloomy echoingwoods, when suddenly it flashed upon him: "It's _my_ trail you are on._You are hunting me._"
"Sat down in the Moonlit Snow."]
The road now led across a little open plain. It would have beenmadness to climb a tree in such a fearful frost, so he went out to themiddle of the open place and sat down in the moonlit snow--aglittering rifle in his hands, a row of shining brass pegs in hisbelt, and a strange, new feeling in his heart. On came the chorus, adeep, melodious howling, on to the very edge of the woods, and therethe note changed. Then there was silence. They must have seen himsitting there, for the light was like day, but they went around inthe edge of the woods. A stick snapped to the right and a low '_Woof_'came from the left. Then all was still. Yan felt them sneaking around,felt them watching him from the cover, and strained his eyes in vainto see some form that he might shoot. But they were wise, and he waswise, for had he run he would soon have seen them closing in on him.They must have been but few, for after their council of war theydecided he was better let alone, and he never saw them at all. Fortwenty minutes he waited, but hearing no more of them, arose and wenthomeward. And as he tramped he thought, "Now I know how a deer feelswhen the grind of a moccasined foot or the click of a lock is heardin the trail behind him."
In the days that followed he learned those Sandhills well, for many afrosty day and bitter night he spent in them. He learned to followfast the faintest trail of deer. He learned just why that trail wentnever past a tamarack-tree, and why it pawed the snow at every oak,and why the buck's is plainest and the fawn's down wind. He learnedjust what the club-rush has to say, when its tussocks break the snow.He came to know how the musk-rat lives beneath the ice, and why themink slides down a hill, and what the ice says when it screams atnight. The squirrels taught him how best a fir-cone can be strippedand which of toadstools one might eat. The partridge, why it divesbeneath the snow, and the fox, just why he sets his feet so straight,and why he wears so huge a tail.
He learned the ponds, the woods, the hills, and a hundred secrets ofthe trail, but--_he got no deer_.
And though many a score of crooked frosty miles he coursed, andsometimes had a track to lead and sometimes none, he still went on,like Galahad when the Grail was just before him. For more than once,the guide that led was the trail of the Sandhill Stag.
IV
The hunt was nearly over, for the season's end was nigh. Themoose-birds had picked the last of the saskatoons, all thespruce-cones were scaled, and the hunger-moon was at hand. But ahopeful chickadee sang '_See soon_' as Yan set off one frosty day forthe great Spruce Woods. On the road he overtook a woodcutter, who toldhim that at such a place he had seen two deer last night, a doe and amonstrous stag with "a rocking-chair on his head."
Straight to the very place went Yan, and found the tracks--one likethose he had seen in the mud long ago, another a large unmistakableprint, the mark of the Sandhill Stag.
How the wild beast in his heart did ramp--he wanted to howl like awolf on a hot scent; and away they went through woods and hills, thetrail and Yan and the inner wolf.
All day he followed and, grown crafty himself, remarked each sign, andrejoiced to find that nowhere had the deer been bounding. And when thesun was low the sign was warm, so laying aside unneeded things, Yancrawled along like a snake on the track of a hare. All day the animalshad zigzagged as they fed; their drink was snow, and now at lengthaway across a lawn in a bank of brush Yan spied a _something_ flash
. Abird perhaps; he lay still and watched. Then gray among the graybrush, he made out a great log, and from one end of it rose twognarled oaken boughs. Again the flash--the move of a restless ear,then the oak boughs moved and Yan trembled, for he knew that the login the brush was the form of the Sandhill Stag. So grand, so chargedwith _life_. He seemed a precious, sacred thing--a king, fur-robed andduly crowned. To think of shooting now as he lay unconscious,resting, seemed an awful crime. But Yan for weeks and months had pinedfor this. His chance had come, and shoot he must. The long, longstrain grew tighter yet--grew taut--broke down, as up the rifle went.But the wretched thing kept wabbling and pointing all about the littleglade. His breath came hot and fast and choking--so much, so verymuch, so clearly all, hung on a single touch. He laid the rifle down,revulsed--and trembled in the snow. But he soon regained the mastery,his hand was steady now, the sights in line--'twas but a deer outyonder. But at that moment the Stag turned full Yan's way, with thoseregardful eyes and ears, and nostrils too, and gazed.