Dipper of Copper Creek

by Jean Craighead George

  Teeter had gone to Lincoln Sparrow Point, to get food for Diver. She was far enough away from the slide to fear for her home, not herself. She dipped, then stood still and watched the avalanche creep down to her cliff. Behind her the frightened chip of the Lincoln sparrow was swallowed in the thunder of the falling mountainside.

  In the nest on the cliff above the flume, White-eye, the last of the fledglings, felt the Niobrara limestone wall shake like a leaf. He flew from the nest unattended and without ceremony. He was too frightened to make the flight to the other shore and dropped into the racing gorge. Before he could paddle to land, the violent water tossed him over the falls. It soaked his feathers, and hurled him into the pool below. A wet ouzel is like any other bird. Its magic is in its feathers and toes, and White-eye had lost control of both.

  When the last few stones had plunged to their resting places, Cinclus winged into the smoky air and dashed toward Vera Falls. He deeked and deeked and deeked. The Townsend solitaire was screaming his fright cry, the Lincoln sparrow his. The birds in the spruce forest were crying in alarm.

  Cinclus stood on a new rock in the center of the pool and called to the waterfall. He was answered by a chip. Through the veil he could see the drooped wings flutter, and the red mouth gaping.

  Cinclus plunged into the stream, glad to be out of the stone-smoke, and looked for hatching mayflies. But they had been tossed and thrown by the water, sloshing in response to the shaking mountain, and he found but a few stunned ones.

  He fed Tippit what he could find and flew up the falls to the nest. The nestlings would need food, too. He ran along the edge of the stream looking for sun flies but they had burst away from the smoke and the once rich water edge was barren.

  There were no calls from the nest. Cinclus flew onto the wall and thrust his head into the misshapen dome. It was empty. He looked again to make sure. No hungry birds reached out to him. He flew to the edge of the flume and called. Tippit answered from the bottom of the falls.

  Teeter winged in and dropped lightly on the dam. The big beams had shifted and some were gone. She was frightened by the change. Cinclus frightened her more. He was running in and out of the dam spray calling and calling. Teeter flew to the nest and saw that it was empty. Her voice joined in the “where are you” cry of the dipper.

  They hunted and called until sundown and then sought their roosts. Cinclus went under the waterfall with Tippit. His white eyelid flicked as he picked his shoulder feathers before burying his bill in them. Teeter roosted near the nest as she had for the past week, ever since the nestlings had become too big to brood, and were feathered sufficiently to keep warm in the cold alpine night.

  Through the night Cinclus sensed that something was missing from the cliff top. There was no coyote concert. The silence awoke the bird and he waited to hear some sound from the mountain. There had to be coyotes above Dipper Cliff, for they belonged, like the meadows and forests. None spoke. Canis did not howl.

  But there was no longer a meadow or a forest above the cliff—just new bare rocks.

  Felis, the mountain lion and guardian of Jim Juddson’s lode, cried from time to time during the night. He had been above the avalanche and was unharmed; but the mountain had shaken the timbers around him, and opened his shaft to the valley. He had snarled and growled throughout the rock slide, a frightened, angry animal. Now he looked down on the desolation and caterwauled from time to time, for Felis, like the dippers and the other animals, did not like his land to change. Just before dawn he paced higher up the glacial valley to search for food. A night like this was fine for Felis. The animals and birds were homeless and disturbed. He could catch them without much stalking.

  At dawn he returned to his silver lair and paced before it. He would have to become accustomed to the open, exposed cave, or seek a new one. He climbed without sound into the shaft and bedded down behind a fallen timber. A loose boulder dropped in the tunnel behind him. As it cracked open it flashed with silver. Felis raised his head and looked at it. It made him restless, falling rocks were not comforting.

  For the next two days Cinclus and Teeter fed Tippit all she could hold. Her feathers were almost full length and she learned to manage her wings with skill. She not only could fly downstream, but also upstream, and she even managed to make the flight up over Vera Falls. The birds spent less time below the cascade, for the water was still murky with stone dust and silt and they could not find enough food. They hunted upstream above the avalanche.

  On the third morning after the mountain fell, Doug came to Vera Falls again. He held a weak little bird in his hands. He was joyful when he saw Cinclus come over the falls and dive into the flume. He opened his hand when the parent surfaced and placed Diver on the shore.

  Diver clinked weakly, but Cinclus heard the voice and ran out of the water to him. He knew Diver immediately. He saw the soft tan belly, the yellow bill that was fading with age, and the feeble dipping-dance that asked for food.

  Cinclus pecked his son to perk him up, then went over the dam to look for insects. He came back, stuffed Diver, pecked him and went off for more.

  Teeter saw Diver from above the flume. She dropped out of the air and fed him the insects she had gathered for Tippit. She ran around and around him, saw that he was dying, and plunged into the flume. She asked no questions of herself. She only answered the inspiring desire to feed her weak and crying fledgling.

  Doug watched them all afternoon as they tried to revive little Diver. They pecked and stabbed at him; a medicine Doug did not understand. They fed the fledgling and made him run on his wobbly feet. They gave him orders that Doug did not even recognize as language.

  Doug and Whispering Bill had desperately wanted to be good parents to the water ouzel, but they could not know the amount of food that he needed, nor could they understand that the rocks, the water, and the stimulation that only the parents could give, were necessary to his life.

  After the avalanche, Doug and Bill had carried the water ouzel back to their cabin. All talk of mining ceased. Little was said about the mountain. All their attention was given to the bird. They talked to him, and most of their conversation was about him. They hunted flies and moths and worms for him.

  Whispering Bill was thrilled to bring the little gray stranger as a guest into his cabin. He cleared the table for him and waited until Doug put him down. Then he sat down on the dynamite box, cupped his grizzly chin in his hands and watched the bird dip and fluff. Silver mining was a wonderful job. It could be postponed for an experience as rare as watching a water ouzel.

  “They eat flies,” Doug told the old man. “I’ve got to get a lot of flies.” In his concern for the dipper Doug avoided thinking of the terror of the mountain.

  They went out to catch food for the ouzel. They swatted flies, ran down grasshoppers and turned stones for nymphs and worms. When night came they lit the lamps and caught the moths that were drawn to them. They worked until late into the night, for they were both too alarmed by the events of the day to be able to sleep.

  Diver was not afraid of the warm hands that carried him from Vera Falls, for they were cupped like the nest and the sensation they gave him was familiar.

  When he was placed on the wooden table he felt timid, and missed the gorge and the tall spruces. But he was confident that his parents would call him, and he would fly out of the wooden cave and they would be there to feed him. He looked at the man and the boy; shook his crumpled feathers, and dipped.

  Diver did not know what should happen after he left the nest. He did not know that a water ouzel did not leave the nest to go into a stone storm, a boy’s hand, and a cabin at fledging time. It was all right with him that he was on a miner’s table. This was his first experience with the world beyond the nest, and if this was how it was, then this was how it was. He was not so insensitive as not to know that all was not quite right; after all, he had seen his parents spend their time in the gorge and foam, but he was not afraid.

  Doug offered him a fl
y, but the boy did not sing the song that made his mouth open and his head go back. He looked at the fly and then at the boy. Clumsy fingers pressed it between the awls of his beak. The fly squirmed and Diver swallowed it. It was a funny little bite, but it served to stimulate his appetite, and he fluttered his wings and begged for more.

  The flies came one at a time, a worm was placed in his mouth. He struggled with its longness and then swallowed it. He felt better and dozed a minute. He was awakened by the old man offering him a flat pan of water. Diver looked at it, but wanted to go back to sleep. The warm hands picked him up and put him in the water. Immediately his breast feathers got wet. He tried to run out of the water, but the faster he ran the wetter he became. Once wet, he couldn’t hold his feathers correctly, and soon his breast was sodden. He hopped on the edge of the pan, shook, and begged for food.

  Again he got a single fly at a time. The doors would bang, the man and the boy would run out, then run in and sit down at the table with a fly, or maybe at the best, two.

  They were trying hard, and by sundown Diver, although still hungry, wanted only to sleep. The lamps came on, and his strange parents chased moths. The moths were fuzzy and hard to swallow, but their big wings were filling, and he did not feel too empty when the lights went out, and the household slept.

  Early the next morning Diver awoke and looked about. His plodding, hard-working parents were still asleep. He looked around for food, and finding none he flew to the bed where the old man lay. He stood on his chest and clinked and scolded.

  Upstairs the boy stirred; he heard the hunger call and came down to feed the ouzel bird. Diver flew over to him and screamed aloud. Doug ran out the door and into the wet grass. He found one cold grasshopper and ran back with it. Diver was fluttering his wings on the table. He received the offering with a hungry cry and gobble. Doug saw that was not enough and ran out for more. Whispering Bill was up when he came back with the next prize from the wilderness—a horsefly from the stable.

  Diver was silent for a few minutes and Doug sat down to think. There must be a better way to catch insects. Whispering Bill suggested a net made from a flour sack and a coat hanger. The boy went to work.

  He was still struggling with the wire, when there came a rap on the door, and Cowboy Pete entered with a jarful of moths.

  “We caught these last night,” he said. “Someone said that dippers eat them.”

  Diver looked at the new man, and ran to take the moths that he held out to him. It was not strange to him to have a hard-riding, rough old cowhand feed him.

  “Phew,” said the cowhand, “that little fellow can pack away a meal. Mebee I’d better get some more.” He clomped out of the door and Whispering Bill and Doug watched him go.

  “He’s not a bad sort,” said Bill.

  THE RETURN OF THE OUZEL

  MR. LANDER, the cattleman, saw Doug sitting on the boardwalk in front of the old tavern, slapping flies and putting them into a jar. He turned his palomino and trotted over to him. As he stopped he swatted a big horsefly on the animal’s neck and handed it to the boy.

  “How’s the ouzel?” he asked, and was truly pleased to hear that he was dipping up and down on the table. “Call on me when you get to town,” he said. “I can help you make a waterfall. I used to work in a restaurant in New York and I saw how they pumped the same water around and around in a fountain. We could do the same sort of thing with a big copper tub.”

  “That would be great!” Doug’s black eyes shone with pleasure. “Like the Chicago fair of 1890.”

  Mr. Lander wondered how Doug knew about that fair, but before he had time to ask, the boy had started back with his bottle of flies.

  All day Diver waited for the “clink” of his parents; meanwhile he gobbled the meager offerings handed him, drank water from the dish, and flew around the cabin, from table to bed.

  At noon he was too tired to fly and he sat on the table and called. He ate better in the afternoon, for Doug had finished his net and was bringing in grasshoppers and all manner of strange insects from the meadows.

  The next day he cried less, for it was an effort to call. He fluffed more, however, for he got cold quickly with so little food to keep him warm. The old man spent much of his time sitting near him, and Diver would huddle close to his hands for warmth.

  Doug came back later in the morning to see the quiet little bird and the anxious man. He had a netful of insects. Diver chirped and swallowed what he could, but now it was becoming difficult to eat. A fledgling needs vigor to digest his food correctly.

  The boy was waiting for his grandfather to say that wild creatures that lived with man suffered for it, but he did not say it, for he wanted the bird to live, and to stay with them.

  The morning of the third day, Diver did not awaken early and call for food. He was still huddled on the table when Doug came down at six. He warmed him near the stove while Bill fixed breakfast. They both knew what they should do, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

  After watching the little ouzel peep and fade through breakfast, it was Doug who made the decision. He would try to feed him every minute all morning, and if that failed he would take him back to the falls.

  Doug stood over the tiny bird for many minutes after lunch. Whispering Bill was stroking his gray feathers. The boy picked up the bird and walked to the door.

  “Where are you going?” the old man asked, although he knew the answer.

  “To take Diver back to his parents if they are still alive.”

  “Yes, yes; I guess so, but do you think it will do any good? He kind of knows us, and he might have forgotten his parents.”

  “He needs the waterfall and the brook trout pool and the kind of flies that his parents find under the stones in the stream. You know that,” Doug said a little impatiently.

  “Yes, yes, I do.” His voice was very sad. He watched the manly figure of his grandson until he was out of sight. Then the old prospector looked up at Mt. Avery and the ghost of Jim Juddson. He called to him, “Jim Juddson, you old miser you, I’ll bet you never had a water ouzel live with you, for all your silver.” As he closed the door, he was sure that Jim Juddson was not laughing.

  It was very late when Doug returned. Bill had a fine meal of hot stew and boiled cabbage waiting for him. The cabin seemed silent without the clinking and fluttering of the little bird. They both talked about mining.

  “While you were gone,” Bill said, “Mr. Lander came by. He offered to take our ore to Pueblo in his truck. We might plan on getting down a few more loads before the snow flies. Might as well pay our grocery bills.”

  For the next week the man and the boy went up and down the mountain, bringing the heavy bags of ore to the cabin. The cowboys of Gothic had not laughed at them since the mountain fell and the dipper came to live in Gothic town. They were almost saddened when three of them stopped by the cabin and learned that Diver had been returned to his parents, a sick little bird. It was Cowboy Pete who remarked, “There’s a whole lot of things people can’t do, and don’t know anything about.”

  One of the cowboys looked up at the mountain and nodded. The other kicked the dust in the trail because he did not want any poetry that might be in him to show.

  But all of the men of Gothic—the prospectors, the cowboys, the cattlemen, had felt the perfection of the wilderness in this little bird that knew how to fly into the waterfalls, and live in the cutting streams, where little else could thrive. They were on the verge of a big idea, but none was able to put it into words. But they did feel more comfortable with their own lives in the lonely bunkhouses of the range because of knowing that the water ouzels lived in the tumble of the cascades.

  No one went near the slide, partly because of superstition, partly because it was loose and dangerous. Jim Juddson’s secret was kept by Felis, the mountain lion, who rested his head on ore that could have built a city beneath Gothic Mountain.

  THE BOY FLEDGLING

  BY EVENING Diver was clinking and cal
ling. He was warm and his legs were steadier. Wobbling with sleep and food, he climbed up the beams of the dam, and hid behind the spray. He awoke when the gorge lightened with sun. He was hungry and cold and too tired to call for food. His father, however, chased him from his roost, jumped on him, pecked him, and brushed him with his wings. Diver perked up under this treatment and opened his mouth. His parents fed him forty times in the first hour of daylight, and each mouthful contained some fifty to sixty insects. It was no wonder Bill and Doug could not keep the little fellow going. When the full light of the warm sun fell into the canyon, Cinclus stopped pecking the youngster and let the sun stimulate him.

  Diver was sore and tired, but his parents would not let him sleep. They would not let him stop eating either. At times they pried his mouth open to fill it with food. As the sun filled his feathers with heat he began to feel stronger and he ran along the shore to look at the water and the rocks.

  After several hours he was flying up the flume over the dam and alighting at Slate Rapids.

  All this time young Tippit was feeding at the foot of the falls with the sun shining on the droplets of water that spilled from her wings. She found food for herself, but she was happy to accept a handout from her father who came down the cascade to see if she was all right.

  A handsome young dipper from Judd Falls flew into the pool below Vera Falls where Tippit was diving.

  Over the waterfall, plunging like a rock, came Cinclus. He sent the young male winging back down the stream. No other dippers, young or old, were allowed on this territory during the nesting and fledgling time. Tippit watched the young ouzel disappear around the bend with her father in pursuit. He was young, as she was. She stepped into the water and floated into a swirling pool.

  The current banged her against the far shore, and she got her feathers wet. When she had succeeded in drying them she went back to try again. This time she steered with more skill and found that she could float upstream if she pressed her tail into the current, and bore down on the right side. She stepped out of the water several yards above her starting point and flew back to do it again.