Two Little Savages | Page 7

Book. Oh, how the stranger did snort at "that driveling trash." Yan
talked of his perplexities. He got a full hearing and intelligent answers.

His mystery of the black ground-bird with a brown mate was resolved
into the Common Towhee. The unknown wonderful voice in the spring
morning, sending out its "_cluck, cluck, cluck, clucker_," in the distant
woods, the large gray Woodpecker that bored in some high stub and
flew in a blaze of gold, and the wonderful spotted bird with red head
and yellow wings and tail in the taxidermist's window, were all
resolved into one and the same--the Flicker or Golden-winged
Woodpecker. The Hang-nest and the Oriole became one. The unknown
poisonous-looking blue Hornet, that sat on the mud with palpitating
body, and the strange, invisible thing that made the mud-nests inside
old outbuildings and crammed them with crippled Spiders, were both
identified as the Mud-wasp or _Pelopæus_.
A black Butterfly flew over, and Yan learned that it was a Camberwell
Beauty, or, scientifically, a Vanessa antiopa, and that this one must
have hibernated to be seen so early in the spring, and yet more, that this
beautiful creature was the glorified spirit of the common brown and
black spiney Caterpillar.
The Wild Pigeons were flying high above them in great flocks as they
sat there, and Yan learned of their great nesting places in the far South,
and of their wonderful but exact migrations without regard to anything
but food; their northward migration to gather the winged nuts of the
Slippery Elm in Canada; their August flight to the rice-fields of
Carolina; their Mississippi Valley pilgrimage when the acorns and
beech-mast were falling ripe.
What a rich, full morning that was. Everything seemed to turn up for
them. As they walked over a piney hill, two large birds sprang from the
ground and whirred through the trees.
"Ruffed Grouse or 'patridge', as the farmers call them. There's a pair
lives nigh aboots here. They come on this bank for the Wintergreen
berries."
And Yan was quick to pull and taste them. He filled his pockets with
the aromatic plant--berries and all--and chewed it as he went. While
they walked, a faint, far drum-thump fell on their ears. "What's that?"

he exclaimed, ever on the alert. The stranger listened and said:
"That's the bird ye ha' just seen; that's the Cock Partridge drumming for
his mate."
The Pewee of his early memories became the Phoebe of books. That
day his brookside singer became the Song-sparrow; the brown triller,
the Veery Thrush. The Trilliums, white and red, the Dogtooth Violet,
the Spring-beauty, the Trailing Arbutus--all for the first time got names
and became real friends, instead of elusive and beautiful, but
depressing mysteries.
The stranger warmed, too, and his rugged features glowed; he saw in
Yan one minded like himself, tormented with the knowledge-hunger, as
in youth he himself had been; and now it was a priceless privilege to
save the boy some of what he had suffered. His gratitude to Yan grew
fervid, and Yan--he took in every word; nothing that he heard was
forgotten. He was in a dream, for he had found at last the greatest thing
on earth--sympathy--broad, intelligent, comprehensive sympathy.
That spring morning was ever after like a new epoch in Yan's
mind--not his memory, that was a thing of the past--but in his mind, his
living present.
And the strongest, realest thing in it all was, not the rugged stranger
with his kind ways, not the new birds and plants, but the smell of the
Wintergreen.
Smell's appeal to the memory is far better, stronger, more real than that
of any other sense. The Indians know this; many of them, in time, find
out the smell that conjures up their happiest hours, and keep it by them
in the medicine bag. It is very real and dear to them--that handful of
Pine needles, that lump of Rat-musk, or that piece of Spruce gum. It
adds the crown of happy memory to their reveries.
And yet this belief is one of the first attacked by silly White-men, who
profess to enlighten the Red-man's darkness. They, in their ignorance,
denounce it as absurd, while men of science know its simple truth.

Yan did not know that he had stumbled on a secret of the Indian
medicine bag. But ever afterward that wonderful day was called back to
him, conjured up by his "medicine," this simple, natural magic, the
smell of the Wintergreen.
He appreciated that morning more than he could tell, and yet he did a
characteristic foolish thing, that put him in a wrong light and left him
so in the stranger's mind.
It was past noon. They had long lingered; the Stranger spoke of the
many things he had at home; then at length said