Dipper of Copper Creek

by Jean Craighead George

  Fearing that he might return, the female coyote had remained with the helpless pups while Canis hunted.

  As Canis trotted along the stream he found that all of his log bridges were washed away or under water. He turned and went upstream as far as the boulders in Open Meadows. They were not to be seen. There was only one crossing left—the bridge at the other end of Gothic. It was a long trip but he could not wait for the water to recede.

  As he raced down the stream valley, he passed the tree where Teeter sat. He smelled her, and saw her. She was only a leap high. He had no choice but to snap up the small bird. It was something to carry home. As he braced for the leap, his feet slipped on the limestone, as slick as ice when wet, and his hind legs were knocked out from under him by the sweeping water of the gorge.

  He spread his forepaws and scraped at the rock with his claws. Dragged down toward the gorge by the current, he clawed frantically, inching his way to safety. Finally he touched the earth under the trees, got a good grip on the soft ground and pulled himself up. He shivered, then set off in haste for the bridge.

  Teeter did not awaken. The coyote could so easily have taken her, for she was not right in a tree at night. The warm scent her body gave off was no hazard on a cliff wall, but low in a tree, she was easy to hunt down.

  The water ouzel was forced to sleep in a location that was a mistake, the kind of mistake that the long history of the dippers would not permit. But it was a strange night and the flash flood that had put her in the tree, also saved her by almost dragging the coyote into a similar mistake. Canis did not belong in the water any more than Teeter belonged in a tree.

  Teeter awoke earlier than she would have on the cliff. She wanted to leave her unfamiliar perch as soon as it was light enough to fly. A few uncomfortable minutes passed and then she could see the limestone cliff. Two wing beats carried her to it.

  Immediately she flew down toward the nest. She did not think of this, she just went because she had to incubate. Her state of mind, her feathers, the rhythm of her body told her to sit tightly on her eggs. She alighted on the ledge where the nest must be and bent down to enter the door. There was no nest. She cried in alarm. Her own alarm note reminded her of the night and the leaping water. But she had not seen the nest collapse, and there was no way for her mind to grasp what had happened. Furthermore the time piece in her body said that she must return to her eggs and warm them. This was a much stronger message than her memory of the flood. Again she tried to enter the door.

  Cinclus awoke and saw that the nest was gone. He was alarmed and worried, but he had no strong incubation drive to make him see what wasn’t there. Teeter did. She kept trying to go into the missing nest.

  Cinclus dipped and dipped, called his worried “zeet, zeet,” and flew to Teeter.

  He saw that their work was destroyed. There was no nest and his instinct told him that there must be one. In a few moments he was back to late May—the time for nest building, and he flew off to feed and sing. He sang from the top of the falls, from the beam in the dam, from the log below the cascade. It did no good.

  Teeter would fly down to him, eat a little, then fly back to the cliff and try to enter the little round doorway that she could see in her mind’s eye until she tried to pass through it.

  Later that morning the problem was solved. Cinclus was feeding in the little spring under the cow parsnips. The tragedy was momentarily forgotten. It was June and Teeter should be incubating. He called the soft note that told her—“leave the eggs now and come eat.” Teeter came.

  At the edge of the spring the hypnum moss grew in large bunches. Teeter stopped catching insects and looked at the moss. She pecked at it. This was the moss that the ouzel bird knew, for out of it they fashioned spray-proof domes. It stirred within her something vague yet urgent. She pecked at it again. As she did a stronger pattern of action took hold of her. She picked up a billfull of moss. Now it became clear. It was June, she must have a nest. The light and the temperature told her it was late to build a nest. Then she must build it swiftly. Something had happened and she must hurry.

  Teeter picked up more wet hypnum moss and flew to the limestone wall. She recalled something of the night, for she began the new nest seven feet above the ledge where the old one had been.

  THE DAWN

  AS HE WAS SADDLING Lodestone in the predawn light, Doug thought he saw a tired coyote limp across the bridge. Grandpa had decided at one o’clock that the big storm was the clearing storm. At four o’clock he and Doug got up and prepared to go up Rustler’s Gulch and take the secret trails to timberline and Whispering Bill’s claim.

  As he worked Doug thought how furious Whisky would be to find that his grocery store had pulled out on him. When he returned for a load of gear he slipped behind the cabin and tucked a loaf of bread in the woodpile.

  He chuckled as he went back to the work. He could see Whisky scolding at the door for fifteen or twenty minutes until he was exhausted with anger. In a perfect tiff, his feathers extended, his white cap lifted, he would fly to the woodpile to shout some more. He would be in such a dither that at first he would not see the bread. When he finally calmed down enough to focus on something, he would discover the cache. His feathers would relax and he would call softly and sweetly “beeer.”

  Whispering Bill had already fastened the dynamite and mining tools on Lodestone, and he asked Doug to tie the sleeping bags, tent, and food on top of them. When it was all secured, and Bill had mounted, Doug looked at the load and thought it heavy for Lodestone. He did not speak about it, though. After all, Grandfather never told him what to do. He could hardly tell Grandfather.

  Doug checked Lodestone’s belly band, patted the equipment, and looked up the road that led past Vera Falls.

  He could not forget the water ouzel. He had “worked rapidly, hoping to get the expedition going so he could see whether the little dipper and her eggs had survived the storm. He had heard the flash flood as it tore under the bridge last night, and he had sat bolt upright in bed and cried, “That’s it. The nest is gone. The bird, too.”

  Doug closed the cabin door, and checked the horse. Bill clicked his tongue and the long-anticipated expedition was under way.

  Doug walked behind. For a brief moment he felt the pouting pangs of childhood as he went toward his work. He knew his mother would be hurt to see that he did not have a horse. She would see to it that he got one. He looked up toward Mt. Avery, blue and paper-like in the early morning. The pains of puppyhood stung him.

  They took a slow starting pace up through the center of the abandoned town. Only a few saw them go. Marmota came around the ruins of old Jim Juddson’s cabin and stood on his hind legs. Whispering Bill saw the gold belly of the marmot and looked away. He did not like being reminded of Jim at this moment.

  Molly, the weasel, ran out from under the barn to hiss at the threesome as they departed. She did not linger long for she was very hungry. She was nursing four young kits and she never seemed to get enough food to satisfy herself. She would hunt with a relentless ferocity, then hurry back to the den to box and bite and play with her round yellow babies.

  When Doug reached the top of the hill he was glad to be walking. Without asking permission, he turned to his grandfather and said, “I am going to Vera Falls a minute to see if the water ouzels are all right. Don’t wait. I’ll catch up.”

  He turned off the road and ran down the footpath to the water. The purple monkshood bobbed at his knees, and the big, white columbines outlined the narrow trail.

  The stream was still high, although it had dropped three feet since the peak. Doug parted the scrubby mountain willows and dashed onto the slope of the gorge.

  “Oh, no!” he cried. A ground squirrel heard his voice and stood up to look at him. The little rodent held his forepaws before him like a preaching clergyman.

  Doug kicked his heel at the duff, thrust his hands in his pocket and turned to go back up the trail, when he heard a mellow song.

  He stepp
ed back and saw Cinclus sitting on the big beam that jutted out from the dam.

  Doug stood very still. Perhaps Teeter would fly to Cinclus. Perhaps she had survived the night, too. He waited and watched, but no other bird appeared.

  Slowly he walked up the steep trail. As he passed the spring, edged with the showy cow parsnips, a flutter of wings startled him. He jumped aside.

  Teeter flew up from his feet with a mouthful of moss. She paid no attention to Doug, just maneuvered her wings to get around him and sped toward the canyon wall.

  Doug ran up the hill. As he burst out onto the road he was surprised by Lodestone and Whispering Bill waiting quietly for him.

  “Well?” said Bill.

  “The nest is gone. But the birds are all right, and there will be a new nest before we get down. She’s gathering moss now.”

  “I’d sure like to know how she escaped the flood,” Bill said. “But those are the things you always have to just wonder about.”

  “Bet she swam right away with it,” said Doug.

  “Maybe so,” Bill said thoughtfully, “but that would be hard water to swim in.”

  “She could have gotten out at the falls,” Doug suggested.

  “Could have, maybe. Those are the things you never know,” whispered the old prospector.

  ABOVE TIMBERLINE

  LODESTONE TROD soundlessly on the spruce needles as the little party climbed toward Rustler’s Gulch. The horse and the man were off to work. The boy was off to an adventure with himself and the mountains.

  For the first mile Doug thought about the water ouzel. A young dipper needed a long period for development. He wondered, as he listened to the creaking of the saddle leather, if Cinclus and Teeter would win the race against winter, if they could rebuild and lay more eggs in time to get strong well-schooled young into the alpine waters.

  Doug did not like abrupt changes any more than Teeter did. He was still in Gothic valley, sharing the lives of the birds and animals, as he began the climb to an awesome world above the trees, where it seemed as if nothing but the wind could live.

  Having worried about the ouzels, he thought about Canis, the coyote of Gothic town. What had sent him dragging home across the Copper Creek bridge at dawn?

  Canis was all right. He was standing before his den, hungry and irritable. The bird that had caused him so much grief last night was flying back and forth from the cliff to the spring beneath the cow parsnips. Canis watched her with the interest a coyote has in all living things. Then he lay down and rolled the dry earth of the den into his fur. He shook, bit his left haunch, and looked down the valley.

  The scent of Odocoileus drifted up to him as she grazed the low edge of the meadow on her way to bed. Canis wondered if this was the morning to take the fawn. His whole family, and he, himself, were that hungry. He could present his graceful and good mate and five pups with the most savory meal the high country offered—young mule deer. But the fawn was getting large, and was a swift runner. It would take some skilled hunting to find and drop him. Canis brooded. He might have to fight off Odocoileus. He blinked as he recalled her sharp, lethal hoofs.

  The scent of the mule deer grew fainter and fainter, and as it passed away, so did the desirability of the food. Canis turned his attention to the scent of the snowshoe hare that was bedded down in the willow groves below him. He considered the possibility of taking his graceful and good mate and his five hungry pups a snowshoe hare. Perhaps he could persuade them that it was the most savory food of the high country. Canis stretched and loped off.

  An hour later he came back to his den with a pocket gopher. He trotted proudly down the burrow with it, and dropped it before his family as if it were the specialty of the land. Swinging his under-fur he sauntered off in search of more food. He brought back ten deer mice and four meadow voles. The good and graceful mate and five hungry pups ate as if this were indeed the most savory of foods. Canis watched them with pride. What appetites!

  Doug might have climbed all the way to the peaks with Gothic on his mind had not old Whispering Bill brought Lodestone to a sudden halt at the beaver ponds. Bill peered through the low aspen.

  “What’s the matter?” Doug asked anxiously.

  “The old buck likes this early pasture,” Bill whispered, and pointed toward a clearing.

  As Doug saw the stag chewing leaves and watching them with a friendly eye, he forgot the valley and its details and looked at the green freshness of the country where he stood. Dark brown beaver ponds gleamed in the flower-filled meadows. The black-green forest rimmed them. Doug was frightened and fascinated by the darkness of it.

  Whispering Bill said something to the mule deer, clicked at Lodestone and turned into a patch of brush that looked as if a mouse could not go through it. It was a dense thicket of alpine willow, even shorter than that at Gothic. A few hundred feet of altitude was measured by the plants. The higher up, the more stunted the growth. The leaves thickened and grew closer together, adjusting to the desiccating winds, the thinner air, and the earlier winter. Small ungracious blossoms clustered the limbs.

  Lodestone picked a route through the willows. Doug followed close behind the horse, sensing at last the excitement of the prospector.

  This must be the hidden trail to his grandfather’s lode. He bravely plunged through the tangled mat and stood before the black forest. He caught his breath with a twinge of fear. But he had to go on and he walked into the catacombs of Englemann spruce, scarcely daring to breathe. He could not hear his own footsteps on the deep rug of needles. The rising sun occasionally penetrated the gloom, making bright circles on the ground, but they were more like eyes than sunlight.

  When they finally left the forest, Doug began to talk and sing. They were climbing almost straight up, following the edge of a rock slide, but they were in the sunlight, and they could see for almost a mile in a wide arc around them.

  After half an hour Doug began to drop back, his breath coming hard and his knees shaking. He felt that he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. Gasping, he finally dropped down on a square boulder whose sharp edges proclaimed its youth, no more than a few hundred years old perhaps.

  A marmot whistled from the slide above. Doug looked into his haughty brown face and smiled. He was about to get to his feet when his eyes met the big brown eyes of a little pika or cony. The hamster-like animal of the alpine rock slides turned from his lookout post and ran off to his den. He had been harvesting the elderberry leaves, fescue, and brome grasses of the meadows, bringing them back to the rocks to dry. They were laid like a bouquet left by a child.

  Doug looked up the rock slide to see his grandfather and Lodestone nearly a quarter of a mile ahead. He was irritated that they had gone on without him, but he was determined not to show that he cared. He looked for the little pika. Presently Doug saw him, edging over the lookout rock with a flower to add to his haypile. When the pile was dry, he would store it in a granary between the stones, where the snow never fell. He would feed on his haypiles all winter as he roamed from granary to granary, burrowing under tons of snow. The water ouzel found air pockets behind a waterfall, the pika found alleys and barns for his food, and warm chambers, between the rocks under the snow. The boy thought how life found a footing in the most unlikely places.

  Doug got up when he saw Grandpa and Lodestone stop and wait at the hairpin turn. By the time he had struggled up to them, he could not feel angry. The stabs of pain in his lungs made him forget the pin prick in his mind.

  Just beyond the hairpin bend, the expedition faced a wide ice field. Bill dismounted and took out a shovel and pick. Carefully he began to cut steps across the ice, for the field was steep. A horse or a man could slip and fall on it. And once they had slipped there would be no stopping until they plunged into the beaver ponds below.

  Bill worked quickly, the small shovel flashed in the sun. Doug stood at the edge of the stream of ice and watched. Testily he looked down the glassy slide to the tops of the giant spruce, which from thi
s height looked no bigger than the tiny alpine willow.

  The wind swept out of the glacial cirque to their right. As it escaped the amphitheater-like recess, it roared down the pass. Doug reached for a boulder to hold himself.

  When the old prospector was halfway across the snow field, Lodestone decided it was time to follow. He began to pick his way slowly. Only then did it occur to Doug that it was time for him to cross.

  He remembered the pick, and was pleased to find it at the edge of the ice. As he dug it in, stepped, and dug it in, he thought how unlike Grandpa to forget anything. He wondered if the old man had left the pick for him. He was warmed by the kindness.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw ice and space below him and was grateful for the pick. Then it occurred to him that the pick might have been left because his grandfather needed some help. He hadn’t asked but he rarely did.

  When the idea came to him, he looked across at the old man, whacking and digging the hard ice. Doug signaled Lodestone to halt. In a burst of good fellowship, he got down on all fours, crawled past Lodestone’s legs, using the pick as a hanger, and stepped over to his grandfather.

  He exchanged the pick for the shovel and dug swiftly after Whispering Bill had broken the surface. Together they worked quickly and safely across the ice field to the secure rocks on the other side.