Lying now with his chin on his crossed forepaws, the Coyote looked out with awakening interest. All the leaves were lifting little by little, as their burden of water dripped away. Even the gray wreckage caught at a turn in the bank seemed alive, for the rain had given the branches a fullness as of nourishing sap. The stream had risen enough to form a water-wheel, spray flying off its rim.
The Coyote slid out from beneath the log, yawned, and stretched with his forelegs on the ground, his haunches at full height. Then he trotted towards the animal trail that slanted up the bank.
The predators’ luck had changed, but luck never was all of success. As he climbed towards the draw, the Coyote rounded a patch of brush and surprised the Mule Deer Buck and his younger deer satellite. Instantly singling out the younger buck, less experienced at defense, the Coyote flung himself into a chase. Faster, even, was the buck. Away it bounded, the Coyote pursuing, snapping, aiming for the buck’s hind leg. Suddenly the deer whirled, faced the Coyote and struck at him with its hoofs. The Coyote dodged. He was winded. He moved off a short distance and waited, panting, while the buck trotted out of sight. He was not discouraged by this defeat. Even in the best condition, a lone coyote seldom caught a healthy, grown deer.
Finally reaching the draw, the Coyote prowled among the rocks, the last of his energy blazing up as his need for food became unendurable. He found no basking squirrels, but under an oak tree discovered weasel trails, all leading to a burrow. Frantically he began to dig. The wet earth crumbled beneath his paws. The scent was so fresh that he expected every scoop to disclose the nest.
A cry shot up from the gully near. Up the side sprang the mother Weasel and several kits. The mother leapt for the Coyote’s face, her attack doubtless meaning that more young weasels were in the burrow. The Coyote and Weasel, two predators, met fang against fang.
The Weasel hung by her teeth from the Coyote’s lip. She clawed for a hold in the fur of his throat. He flung his head to shake her off, but still she held. With a stronger swing he got free of her, ripping away the flesh she had gripped.
He turned in a slanting lunge, shoulders low, his throat drawn back into his ruff. His attack was in his long pointed mouth, with its teeth ready to strike from lifted lips. The Weasel hurled herself at him again. His jaws snapped, but she evaded them. Finally she darted out of his reach into a hollow log. He dug again into the burrow and soon came upon two weasel kits. With a quick shake he had broken each of them.
At last he knew again the feel and taste of food in his mouth. Although he was starving, he ate in a coyote’s lingering way. It was a light meal, yet it strengthened him for a further hunt.
The Coyote loped into the brush below. Now a doe flew past him. She was a yearling, fleeing so wildly, so plainly in a panic, that she seemed likely to stumble and perhaps break a leg. The Coyote raced after her, throwing the whole of his strength into this chase. His coyote’s speed, fastest of all wolves’, might have equalled the doe’s on an open hillside, but here he fell behind. For the deer was keeping a straight course, bounding over the top of brush, logs, boulders, and seedlings, while the Coyote must circle most of them. Soon he had lost even the hoofbeats.
But he did not give up that doe. His memory turned again to hunting in which his mate had assisted. He lay on a rock until his panting quieted and strength came again into his trembling legs. Then he went back to the den.
His mate seemed more alert; perhaps she too had found food. She trotted forward as if she knew his intention and together they started out. He led. As they climbed over logs or threaded brush, drew up to tracks, sniffed them and galloped away, they moved with a harmony which hinted that coyotes had a talent for a paired life. Only wolves and foxes, among all wild mammals, mated permanently. One reason why they did was suggested by the shared intuition that made the Coyotes hunt well together.
They were following the fleeing doe by scent. She had crossed the stream, then climbed the opposite slope. On that side was the same kind of country, a forest broken with brush and boulders above the same long cliff of which Beetle Rock was the knobby end. The trail took the Coyotes to a meadow. Was the deer somewhere in it, lying hidden by the jungle-like grasses? Keeping well back among the trees, the Coyotes started around the edge. They found the doe on the other side.
She was eating a mushroom which had broken up through the fallen needles under a fir. The Coyotes would have marked her anywhere as prey, for her jerky motions showed nervousness apart from any sensible fear. She constantly shied, prancing with arched forefeet; a grasshopper’s click was enough to make her leap aside. Between bites she threw up her head, with whirling ears. The Coyotes were adjusting all their movements to the wind, for if the doe caught a whiff of their scent she would be away and choosing her own direction.
From now on the Coyotes intended to control that doe. Soon they would start her off, the male Coyote at her heels, his mate a short way ahead to turn her up the slope or down. If she acted as the deer did in the foothills, she would flee in circles. That would give the Coyotes a chance to chase her in relays and keep in fresh strength themselves. While the Coyote was running the doe through the first half of her circle, his mate would trot across and be ready at the halfway point to take her turn. He would trot back, leisurely, and relieve his mate at the starting point.
Now the Coyote was considering whether the upper or lower slope was more clear. This was their first deer relay in the mountains; later they might learn instead to run the deer into the rocks, down stream banks, or over cliffs. The chase they planned today, a foothill strategy, would not be easy, but both Coyotes were eager to begin it; leg and chest muscles, ears, even tails were tense. The Coyote decided on the upward course, turned to signal his mate — and saw a cougar, poised for a spring at the doe. It was directly above her, among the upturned roots of a fallen sequoia. Within an instant the great cat leapt, striking the doe’s back with all its weight, bringing her to the ground lifeless.
Already both Coyotes comprehended that the cougar’s appearance need be no misfortune — that it even might solve their existence in the mountains. The cougar could provide them with a livelihood, at least until they were more at home here. One often had done that in the brushlands. They had not known that they might meet the same involuntary benefactor in their new environment.
As was its custom, the cougar dragged the carcass away from the scene of the slaying, downhill, this time to the grassy bank of a brook. With extreme caution the Coyotes followed, then watched the cougar from a knoll above it. To their noses came the scent of fresh meat. They saw the cougar enjoying such a meal as they had not tasted for several months.
The sun dropped below the branches of surrounding trees. Now slanting between the trunks, its light fell on the cougar. A pair of ravens began wheeling above. At sight of them the Coyote shifted his forelegs with anxiety, for other coyotes were likely to see the ravens and come loping in for a chance at the carrion. If he must, then, he would fight for this meat. But no other coyotes appeared and finally the cougar was satisfied. It buried the rest of the carcass, as the Coyotes expected, scraping leaves and needles over it. Then it walked away slowly across a rocky clearing, the tip of its long tail upturned and slightly swaying. Beyond the clearing it vanished, shoulders first, apparently over the edge of the cliff.
The Coyotes allowed themselves only the briefest meal here. Many times a cougar did not return to a carcass, yet it might. So the Coyotes began at once galloping back towards the stream with pieces as large as they could carry swiftly. They hid the meat in a log. After they abandoned the cougar’s cache, they cleaned their muzzles and chests on the grass, then took their stock from the log to the stream, across and up to the den. Each pup had a great chunk of nourishment, and at last the parents could stop and fill their own empty stomachs.
Most of the meat would go to the pups and their mother, for the Coyote must leave to follow the cougar, to trail it on its circular migration. There was no question about the suc
cess of its hunting. Regularly there would be cached carcasses, which the Coyote would transfer to new hiding places. The Coyote family would be assured of a food supply until they might hope to perfect their own strategy of mountain hunting.
With no ceremony of leave-taking, the Coyote started out from the den, to pick up the cougar’s trail and shadow the cat for the six to ten days before it would come back to Beetle Rock. It had not returned to the cache. The Coyote found that it had wound down the cliff, crossed the stream, circled the base of Beetle Rock, and proceeded along the canyon side. Apparently it was heading for the greater adjoining canyon at the foot of the Western Divide.
Most of the sun’s light was gone, even from the sky. Bats were cutting in and out among the tree trunks, and the forest seemed suddenly full of robins, all on the ground, hopping through the dusk with a sociable, soft liveliness. None bothered to flutter away when the Coyote passed, for they sensed that he was not foraging and he was no enemy at other times. He did not kill for pleasure.
The cougar’s trail came to the intersection of the canyons. Here the Coyote paused, for the trail was becoming almost too fresh. He climbed to the saddle of Moro Rock, from which he could see across both canyons — on the left to the ridge of the Western Divide. A faint flush still tinted the snow of the crags, but it was fading, and they were becoming even more remote. The foot of the range already was lost in darkness. The rosy peaks seemed to belong more to the sky than to the earth.
The Coyote threw back his head, closed his eyes, and began his song. It sounded as though it came from several throats, for it was blended of different strains, beginning one after another somewhat as brooks formed by the snow of the crags joined to become a stream and a river.
Apparently he was not calling to anyone, or asserting anything but his coyote nature. The song was as lonely as the crags, and as wild as the water’s cry.
WHAT HAPPENED TO
The Deer Mouse
The Deer Mouse was trapped by a sound. Startled as she sped about on the floor of the night, she had run beneath the edge of a stone. There now she hid in her fur, nose on her chest, feet all covered. But her ears’ wide membranes stood high with alarm, twitching as though attached to the sound by threads.
She heard a whisper of something coming. Something was sweeping on thin wings between the needles of the trees; something was streaming across the hillside grasses, brushing the brittle husks of the seeds. Feet were stealing, seeking through the dry stalks, and leaping over the Mouse’s stone.
Sometimes the sound sighed down. Then the Mouse would dare to turn around, trying to fit deeper into the crack between the stone and the ground. She wanted the walls of the nook to press her all over, but, however she crouched, one of her sides had no touch of shelter on it. That side yearned with a sense of lack, with a sort of skin-hunger, quite apart from its feeling of cold.
At other times the sound snapped. Then the Deer Mouse dropped flat, ready to dodge a hunter’s pounce. She did not know that the enemy was less substantial, even, than she — that it was the wind, tossing twigs and rustling the grasses. Most of her experience was in matters as small as seeds and flies, the voices of mice, and the look of her clean white forepaw with its tiny claws, like pearl slivers. What could she understand of a battle of winds above a canyon?
The Deer Mouse wished to return to her mother’s nest, an earthy cavern among the roots of a manzanita bush. The nest-ball of grass and feathers was as soft as the arching belly of a mother mouse, and behind it the roots were strong, like a mother’s bones that would hold off any enemy. The Deer Mouse had grown beyond the need for cuddling, but she longed for the proof on her skin of sheltering walls. Not tonight alone, but for several days, she had been obsessed with the loveliness of crannies shaped to cover a mouse.
Shortly before midnight she could have run back to the nest quite safely, for there were signs that the real dangers had drawn away. The owls were down in the hollow, as their hooting told, but in tones too low to sound in ears of deer mice. The bears had gone up the draw and were not yet due to return. Now the coral king snake would be too cold to forage. The swirling wind carried no warning of wildcat or shrew. But the swish in the grass had more meaning for a mouse.
Finally the sound shifted farther off. The Deer Mouse left the stone and raced to the manzanita, each bound as light as if she were a woolly aster released from the wind’s pressure. She entered the nest and crept upon the furry heap that was her mother and sister. Now her back and sides were pushed against the dome of fibres, giving her such solid, real assurance of being hidden that she quickly relaxed in sleepy peace.
Her vibrissae were brushed by a fourth mouse groping in. He was the brother, who had left the family several days before. The wind had brought him home. Its uneasy sounds had meant for him, too, that predators were swarming through the forest, and made him long for the security he associated with his mother’s nest. But while he was fitting himself among the other mice, the earth jarred. A powerful weight had struck beside the bush. It was a great horned owl, who had seen the brother slip into the dead leaves over the roots.
The leaves were swept away and claws scraped into the soil. Then the nest jolted as the roots were pulled apart. The whole pile of mice was a-tremble with frantic little heartbeats. All the mice were ready to leap as soon as the nest was torn — that was now!
The Deer Mouse alighted beneath a pine tree and darted into the fallen needles. Around her was a fanning out of quick patters. That shriek must have meant that the owl caught one mouse, perhaps the sister, always slower, more cautious, abnormally afraid of predators. The Deer Mouse’s nose was pushed into the soil, but her great black eyes looked up through the needles. Against the brightness of moon-silvered clouds she saw the owl rise and sweep away.
The needles were no firm shelter. Now the Mouse was bounding down to a log in the crease of a gully. She crept under the log’s curve and waited until her panting ceased. Then she found a split in the wood where she could hide. It was a tight refuge, but after such a fright she could endure being crowded by the touch of walls. The middle of the night had come, a heavy time when deer mice liked to sleep. She let her fears fall away and closed her eyes.
Moonlight woke her. It had entered even her cramped little niche. The Mouse slipped out and down the dark side of the log. She was hungry, but the log was surrounded with glittering granite gravel. The very sight of it made her back up tighter against the wood. Not even a tuft of grass grew near, for the log lay in a cradle of sand. But its shadow extended beyond the sand. The Mouse prowled out and found a spot where the soil smelled tempting. Her forepaws whirled into it, scooping it towards her so fast that she was continually astride a mound, which her hind feet kicked back. Now her claws struck an acorn, split by its swelling germ. She hooked her sharp front teeth into it, gave it a mighty pull, and it came free. She ran back to the log, then, with the acorn in her mouth. There she ate it, morsel by morsel — delicious nut, succulent with new life. The Chickaree had buried it. His stores, cached around the gully, had furnished the deer mice with many a meal. They watched even his cones, and when one dried enough to open they reached between the scales with their tiny paws, drew out the seeds and carried them to their own hoard in a pine stump.
Feeling untidy now, the Mouse licked her forepaws and scrubbed the pink tip of her nose. Taking each hind foot in her forepaws, she turned it and washed it. With the hind feet she smoothed her shoulders, and she washed her sides and back. Even her striped furry tail she cleaned. A quick shake then, and all her pretty coat, white below, oak-leaf brown above, was smooth. She seemed hardly at all like a house mouse, more like a toy doe, and so similar in color that it was clear why human beings had named her a deer mouse.
She had slept, she had eaten, and she was groomed. With these needs out of the way, she became a quiet mouse, facing a great emergency, for she was homeless. As she crouched in the shadow of the log, some delicacy of pose, or soft wildness in her eyes, gave her
the unreal look of fawns. She was a small, brief union of breath, pulse, and grace, yet the apparent nothingness of her, the hint that she soon would vanish, if she had not already, actually was her strength.
All mice were so hunted that some kinds had become erratic, but deer mice learned to bound ahead of the strain of attack. They lived with a lightness that served very well for poise. Always — their way was — be ready to drop the game or gnawing or nest-building, and disappear, noiseless as a blown thistle. Dig to the sprout with airy speed, before a falling leaf may warn of claws on the bough above, before the breeze flies ahead of an enemy bringing his scent. However close come the beak or teeth, then, never hoard the fright. Don’t let even death be important, since it is so familiar. Try to escape if there is a chance, but if there is not, give up life quickly.
Yet the Deer Mouse was more than a fluff of a little being. She, as well as any bear or coyote, must have her established place at Beetle Rock. Among the boulders, brush, and trees must be one cranny recognized as hers. The wrecking of her mother’s nest had made it necessary to find her own niche and her own life, but she was ready, anyway, to cease the play of a young mouse and become a grown one. Before her brother left, he had raced with her on the boughs of the manzanita, and she had loved that swift motion as fawns love to bound down a slope, or chickarees to leap from tree to tree. Afterwards she sometimes had run through the bush alone, whirling herself exquisitely half out of her senses, but now a different interest had stirred in her, an impulse that soft speed would not quiet.
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 11
