Wilderness Ways | Page 9

or animal in the woods where thousands die yearly.
Even your dog, that was born and lived by your house, often disappears
when you thought him too feeble to walk. Death calls him gently; the
old wolf stirs deep within him, and he goes away where the master he
served will never find him. And so with your cat, which is only
skin-deep a domestic animal; and so with your canary, which in death
alone would be free, and beats his failing wings against the cage in
which he lived so long content. But these all go away singly, each to
his own place. The caribou is the only animal I know that remembers,
when his separation comes, the ties which bound him to the herd winter
after winter, through sun and storm, in the forest where all was peace
and plenty, and on the lonely barrens where the gray wolf howled on
his track; so that he turns with his last strength from the herd he is
leaving to the greater herd which has gone before him--still following
his leaders, remembering his first lesson to the end.
Sometimes I have wondered whether this also were taught in the
caribou school; whether once in his life Megaleep were led to the spot
and made to pass through it, so that he should feel its meaning and
remember. That is not likely; for the one thing which an animal cannot
understand is death. And there were no signs of living caribou
anywhere near the place that I discovered; though down at the other
end of the lake their tracks were everywhere.

There are other questions, which one can only ask without answering.
Is this silent gathering merely a tribute to the old law of the herd, or
does Megaleep, with his last strength, still think to cheat his old enemy,
and go away where the wolf that followed him all his life shall not find
him? How was his resting place first selected, and what leaders
searched out the ground? What sound or sign, what murmur of wind in
the pines, or lap of ripples on the shore, or song of the veery at twilight
made them pause and say, _Here is the place_? How does he know, he
whose thoughts are all of life, and who never looked on death, where
the great silent herd is that no caribou ever sees but once? And what
strange instinct guides Megaleep to the spot where all his wanderings
end at last?

II. KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET-VOICE.
[Illustration: Killooleet]
The day was cold, the woods were wet, and the weather was beastly
altogether when Killooleet first came and sang on my ridgepole. The
fishing was poor down in the big lake, and there were signs of
civilization here and there, in the shape of settlers' cabins, which we did
not like; so we had pushed up river, Simmo and I, thirty miles in the
rain, to a favorite camping ground on a smaller lake, where we had the
wilderness all to ourselves.
The rain was still falling, and the lake white-capped, and the forest all
misty and wind-blown when we ran our canoes ashore by the old cedar
that marked our landing place. First we built a big fire to dry some
boughs to sleep upon; then we built our houses, Simmo a bark
commoosie, and I a little tent; and I was inside, getting dry clothes out
of a rubber bag, when I heard a white-throated sparrow calling cheerily
his Indian name, _O hear, sweet Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet!_ And
the sound was so sunny, so good to hear in the steady drip of rain on
the roof, that I went out to see the little fellow who had bid us welcome
to the wilderness.
Simmo had heard too. He was on his hands and knees, just his dark
face peering by the corner stake of his commoosie, so as to see better
the little singer on my tent.--"Have better weather and better luck now.
Killooleet sing on ridgepole," he said confidently. Then we spread
some cracker crumbs for the guest and turned in to sleep till better

times.
That was the beginning of a long acquaintance. It was also the first of
many social calls from a whole colony of white-throats (Tom-Peabody
birds) that lived on the mountain-side just behind my tent, and that
came one by one to sing to us, and to get acquainted, and to share our
crumbs. Sometimes, too, in rainy weather, when the woods seemed
wetter than the lake, and Simmo would be sleeping philosophically,
and I reading, or tying trout flies in the tent, I would hear a gentle stir
and a rustle or two just outside, under the tent fly. Then, if I crept out
quietly, I would find