Secret of the Woods | Page 5

way,
and Mooween concludes that he is taking too much trouble for so small
a mouthful, and shuffles off to the log where the red ants live.
On his journeys through the woods Tookhees never forgets the
dangerous possibilities. His progress is a series of jerks, and whisks,
and jumps, and hidings. He leaves his doorway, after much watching,
and shoots like a minnow across the moss to an upturned root. There he
sits up and listens, rubbing his whiskers nervously. Then he glides
along the root for a couple of feet, drops to the ground and disappears.
He is hiding there under a dead leaf. A moment of stillness and he
jumps like a jack-in-abox. Now he is sitting on the leaf that covered
him, rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over his trail as if he
heard footsteps behind him. Then another nervous dash, a squeak
which proclaims at once his escape. and his arrival, and he vanishes
under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, a whole colony of
them.
All these things, and many more, I discovered the first season that I
began to study the wild things that lived within sight of my tent. I had
been making long excursions after bear and beaver, following on
wild-goose chases after Old Whitehead the eagle and Kakagos the wild
woods raven that always escaped me, only to find that within the warm
circle of my camp-fire little wild folk were hiding whose lives were
more unknown and quite as interesting as the greater creatures I had
been following.
One day, as I returned quietly to camp, I saw Simmo quite lost in
watching something near my tent. He stood beside a great birch tree,
one hand resting against the bark that he would claim next winter for
his new canoe; the other hand still grasped his axe, which he had
picked up a moment before to quicken the tempo of the bean kettle's
song. His dark face peered behind the tree with a kind of childlike
intensity written all over it.
I stole nearer without his hearing me; but I could see nothing. The
woods were all still. Killooleet was dozing by his nest; the chickadees
had vanished, knowing that it was not meal time; and Meeko the red

squirrel had been made to jump from the fir top to the ground so often
that now he kept sullenly to his own hemlock across the island, nursing
his sore feet and scolding like a fury whenever I approached. Still
Simmo watched, as if a bear were approaching his bait, till I whispered,
"Quiee, Simmo, what is it?"
"Nodwar k'chee Toquis, I see little 'Fraid One'" he said, unconsciously
dropping into his own dialect, which is the softest speech in the world,
so soft that wild things are not disturbed when they hear it, thinking it
only a louder sough of the pines or a softer tunking of ripples on the
rocks.--"O bah cosh, see! He wash-um face in yo lil cup." And when I
tiptoed to his side, there was Tookhees sitting on the rim of my
drinking cup, in which I had left a new leader to soak for the evening's
fishing, scrubbing his face diligently, like a boy who is watched from
behind to see that he slights not his ears or his neck.
Remembering my own boyhood on cold mornings, I looked behind him
to see if he also were under compulsion, but there was no other mouse
in sight. He would scoop up a double handful of water in his paws, rub
it rapidly up over nose and eyes, and then behind his ears, on the spots
that wake you up quickest when you are sleepy. Then another scoop of
water, and another vigorous rub, ending behind his ears as before.
Simmo was full of wonder, for an Indian notices few things in the
woods beside those that pertain to his trapping and hunting; and to see
a mouse wash his face was as incomprehensible to him as to see me
read a book. But all wood mice are very cleanly; they have none of the
strong odors of our house mice. Afterwards, while getting acquainted, I
saw him wash many times in the plate of water that I kept filled near
his den; but he never washed more than his face and the sensitive spot
behind his ears. Sometimes, however, when I have seen him swimming
in the lake or river, I have wondered whether he were going on a
journey, or just bathing for the love of it, as he washed his face in my
cup.
I left the cup where it was and spread a feast for the little guest, cracker
crumbs and a bit of candle end. In the