The anger of the Buck had still no chance to subside. Out of the thicket behind the tree came the nervous yearling from his own herd, her poise completely scattered. Wherever the Buck turned, she was in front of him, jerking up her feet and flinging her head above a swollen throat. The Buck tried to browse on the soft new needles of the lower fir boughs, ignoring the doe. But she pranced so near him that he was forced to jump aside, and his antlers crashed against the branch.
At the staggering pain, his fury broke. He struck at the doe and the pointed hoof of his forefoot tore into her shoulder. She bounded across the draw and was away, flying with uncontrolled speed, senselessly turning the way the Coyote had gone.
The Buck stood under the fir, trembling, waiting for peace to come back into his legs. He was scraping his hoof through the fallen needles to clear a bed for himself, when he heard a rustle in the draw. Perhaps a lizard or chipmunk was stirring the dead leaves, but the Buck must be sure. He held his eyes on the leaves. Out of them slid the long bright body of a coral king snake.
The Buck was never a predator, but now he stood as finely tense as any stalking cougar or coyote. He saw the snake glide up the gully-side towards the fir. Its motion became slower. Under the edge of the tree it stopped. Perhaps the warm earth here seemed a pleasant bed on which to lie and digest its food. But it had intruded upon the resting place of the Buck. The Buck watched without a movement, almost without breath, as the snake began to coil itself.
He waited until the snake had drawn up more compactly, and then he moved forward with an arched, precise step. He began to circle the snake. It had seen him; possibly it sensed its danger but knew that it could not escape. With a terrible deliberate fury, all the accumulated fury of the day, the Buck moved on, around and around. His neck had a forward thrust, his hair was up, and his eyes were hot with a cruelty that seldom swells into a deer’s eyes.
A ground squirrel, a chipmunk, and various birds watched, tense and silent. Three jays in the fir were too fascinated to scream. Still as slowly around the snake moved the Buck. The snake’s head turned as the Buck passed in front of it. Its scarlet tongue darted in and out of its jaws; its eyes glittered. Around again and still again went the Buck. Then he was high in the air. His four sharp hoofs together, he brought his full weight down upon the snake. Many times he leapt and struck it. The snake was broken flesh, then it was pulp, and then was only a stain upon the ground. Not until all his strength was spent did the Buck cease the attack.
Never before had he been so exhausted as now, and never so unnerved. If a coyote or cougar had attacked him, he would have been able neither to flee nor to defend himself. He saw the Grouse walk with her beautiful balanced step into mottled sunshine, and let herself down upon the needles. A breeze blew over her and her feathers rose, the after-shafts filling the spaces between with down. She was round and soft, and looked completely comfortable. Along the line of the Rock against the canyon, her eyes found some reason for peace.
The Buck knelt and lay near her upon the weathered needles. His breath was short, and his heartbeat was like the pound of hoofs. He brought up a cud of chinquapin leaves. He could only wait, hoping his strength and poise would return.
Around him were various creatures that he knew as well as he knew his herd — little companions who never competed with him, and never feared him, since he had no taste for flesh. They went about under his very nose and hoofs, absorbed in their own doings but communicating their moods to each other, and possibly even to the Buck.
He watched a pair of chipmunks, two small, separate lives between which there had sprung the tension of love. This afternoon they were in the full play of it, stretching out the elastic invisible cord, letting it snap, stretching it, snapping it.
Their play was a chase, none ever faster, lighter, or with pauses more sweet. The male waits, his back to the fir, forepaws clasped to his breast. The female watches him from the trunk above, where she hides in the bark. She steals down, touches his head with her nose, and he turns. He reaches up and their faces stroke each other, cheeks and noses stroking with motions facile and tender. She is gone, and he after her, up and around the tree, and down. In front of the Buck he meets her, and the two tumble together so fast that even the Buck’s quick eye cannot disentangle them. Then they speed away into the brush. They will come back. All afternoon, all summer, the game will continue, even after their young begin to peek out from the nest hole. The original two, seeming much too ingenuous to be parents, still will play. Neither will drop his end of the fine, resilient cord.
The Buck drew a breath that deeply expanded his sides, as if he had recovered some delicate tension from the chipmunks’ example.
Another small comrade, a golden-mantled squirrel, was walking around him on hind legs, eating the seeds of flowers and grasses. He pulled down the tops of the taller plants with forepaws as deft as hands, and stood up nibbling the seeds while his eyes met the Buck’s with confidence equal to his. The furry gold button that was his nose began an interested quivering. Apparently he smelled the grass juice of the Buck’s cud, for he walked close to the Deer’s face, a face as large as he was, and reached up with his paws. From the distance of his different nature, the Buck looked down at the squirrel, and continued chewing. The squirrel did not often seek food from deer, but it was typical of him to over-ride habit, and to risk such an overture. All his ways had a stocky stamina, possibly contagious.
The Grouse, rested now, moved farther into the sun and began a dust bath. The Buck became conscious of a new discomfort, a pain he never had felt before. It was in his knees. Perhaps the storm had cramped them. Would he dare to unbend his legs, to lie with them outstretched? He tried the new position, and the relief was like food in a hungry mouth. He would not be able to spring up quickly if an enemy appeared, but danger seemed to have lost some of its urgency. The Buck was calm again, but listless.
In the cherry bush near was a pretty liveliness that might be stimulating. A calliope hummer spun from bloom to bloom, cerise rays darting from its throat. A junco declared from the outermost twig that his territory extended to here. His song trilled as brightly as if the vibrations of light had been made audible, a pleasant way to assert one’s rights. And down the fir tree flashed the Chickaree now, to tease the Grouse. This was his daily recreation, rousing to watch. While he sputtered around the bird with saucy taunts, she continued her dust bath, even repeated it, until one of his squeals finally exploded her anger. Out flew her feathers then, and she danced and hissed. The Chickaree climbed to the fir-top, but was down again quickly to show her that she could not intimidate him, either. Fiery little tease — no one could watch him and remain inert. And the Steller Jay, another tease, added some excitement by imitating a red-tailed hawk.
Once more the Buck was a deer to lead deer. His eyes were perceiving smaller movements, and his ears were flicking to slighter sounds than most deer would catch. He had a leader’s extra margin of alertness again.
He saw the forked-horn coming up the draw and felt ready to get up and join him. In late afternoon the deer went out to browse on the Rock itself. The Buck had only to cross the draw, but that creek-bed was a litter of boulders and logs, a hazard to all but the steadiest feet. The Buck rose awkwardly from his new outstretched position and started into the granite wreckage. He walked as if he were not sure what his feet would do. One foot did step on a stone that tipped, and the Buck went down on his knees. The only harm done was to his confidence. Rest and the example of his spirited companions had healed his nerves, but now he seemed to sense that no example of energy could give strength to muscles or power to a heartbeat.
Out on the Rock were half the Buck’s herd — the yearlings, two does, a four-pointer, and the five-point buck. The heads of the deer were buried in the brush; each was concentrating on his effort to gather, leaf by leaf, the great amount of foliage required to nourish a grown deer. The leader and the forked-horn browsed along the north side of the Rock, above the draw.
The morning storm had cracked a dead branch that overhung the Rock from a sugar pine. Now suddenly it broke and came crashing down through the lower boughs. All the heads were quickly out of the brush and the deer were moving towards the pine, for the branch was covered with staghorn lichen, their favorite food. They stopped, however, when they saw it falling near the leader. Since he was the herd boss, it was his of course if he wanted it, and he did.
The branch hit the granite and bounced his way. He stepped towards it. But the five-point buck leapt forward, ahead of him. The leader’s hoofs shot up. The five-point buck will compete for this lichen! Both deer have reared. The five-pointer fairly boxes with his forefeet, a steady attack. His blows are swifter and more precise than the exhausted leader’s. One hoof has struck the leader’s chest. Its thud can be heard above the bucks’ hoarse hissing and the ring of their hind feet on the stone. The leader flings back his head in a gasp. Then his forefeet come to earth gropingly. He stands bewildered as the five-point buck takes possession of the prize.
While the long branch was cleaned of lichen, the Mule Deer remained motionless, recovering his breath, feeling himself transformed into a buck who could not defend his rights when they were challenged.
The sun was low. Among the darkening mountain ranges, Beetle Rock held up a late warm island of daylight. Birds skimmed and chipmunks bounded freely, as if no hunter ever would enter an atmosphere so undefended. The Lizard, returning to his den, looked up at the Deer so strangely quiet. The movement of the little creature caught the Buck’s eye; he turned his head to watch it. Then he walked a few steps and began to browse.
All the deer were foraging near the draw now, working towards the trail they would follow down the slope and across the stream to the meadow. Two of the yearlings started into the draw. But they stopped, for they saw that the Buck was alarmed. His head was up, his body tense. He had heard a bear cub call, and he was the only deer who did hear it.
With the secretness of long skill, he shifted up and down the Rock, sharpening all his senses for more bear signs. No other deer knew why he was startled, but they would not move as long as he was nervous. Since his ears were pointing across the draw, they listened in the same direction, but they heard nothing.
Then clearly to them all came the breaking of bark under the Bear’s claws. Soon afterward her scent was strong on the Rock, for she and the cubs were walking towards the draw. The yearlings bounded back towards the rim, but the Buck’s experience with his enemies told him when he was safe as when he was in danger; he knew that bears never would expose themselves on Beetle Rock at sunset. The bears remained among the trees on the other side of the draw, the Buck following their progress by what he heard and smelled of them. Finally he knew that they were out of the neighborhood.
The other deer continued to watch the Buck. His actions showed them the stages of his returning confidence. When they saw that he had forgotten the bears, they felt reassured enough to start for the meadow. One by one they disappeared between two granite blocks, and into the draw.
By the time full darkness lay in the meadow, the deer all would have assembled there. They would turn their eyes towards the Buck whenever their heads were lifted from the grass. They would know if he stepped in the brook; they would wait for him to guide them out of the meadow when the moon rose. On this June eighteenth, physical dominance in the herd had passed to the five-point stranger. But leadership in wisdom would belong to the Buck for as many years as he deserved it.
The Buck had his own way of ending a day. He liked to stand at the edge of the Rock while the sun moved towards the ridge across the canyon. After it was gone, he turned out over the Rock’s rim and down a slanting ledge to the shelf below on the cliff, and thence to the trail. Tonight, as usual, the forked-horn returned ahead of him to the meadow.
At this time sounds were very clear, as if the air resisted them no longer. The breeze, brushing up the wooded canyon-sides, found corners and blades of granite at the cliff, and curled upon their edges with a resonant hum. The river below was a colder murmur, waters leaving the canyon, rushing away.
The animal sounds were the ones that touched the Buck’s ears into motion. They told him that one company was turning home for sleep. The Chickaree’s claws were catching into the bark as he climbed the fir to his nest; the grouse cock beat a late call; a golden-mantled squirrel barked to summon its young; last mouthfuls of leaves were being pulled from branches. Less tranquil, on the trail below, a boy’s excited voice cried out.
The Buck stood tall, his legs straight and his head lifted. He was still except for his ears. Sometimes they listened separately, one curving forward under his antler, the other one back, point quivering towards the trees. Then the ears would swing to the same sound, as smoothly and subtly as if they were hinged together.
Other sounds meant that a different company had finished their sleep and were setting out for their waking hours. Distant robins warned that a bear approached. The down of an owl’s wings ruffled the air. The flight of uncounted insects blended into a fleshless drone; as a bat pursued them, its snapping mandibles clicked. One voice wished and dared to sing. From a cranny at the Buck’s feet came notes like raindrops hanging from the tips of leaves. They seemed to belong with the voices at the stream in the morning, lifted without danger in the daylight. This one, bravely raised in darkness, was the voice of a singing deer mouse.
Suddenly the Buck sprang back, his legs aslant, tensed, ready to bound away. For on the granite shelf below, he saw the cougar. It was pacing eastward. Even when it reached the outer corner, where the cliff broke into a talus slide, the cougar continued swiftly, obviously not hunting. It was starting away from Beetle Rock, from this part of the mountain, where it doubtless had spent the day. It would be gone again for a while, as the Buck knew. Its long tail shrank, then vanished, around an edge of granite. When it vanished, the principal enemy of the deer was gone.
Now there was a change in the dark shape of the Buck above the canyon. His head was a slightly falling, not a lifted line. A trace of swing came into his back; his knees showed the beginning of a bend. The cougar’s departure had lifted much of his fear, but this Deer was resting from the strains of more than one day.
For ten years, he had not relaxed completely — his muscles often, but never his alertness. He had poised himself on the forest movements, scents, and sounds as tirelessly as if he had been a bird, born in the air, who must soar through all its life. But finally he would be able to alight. Did he know that now?
One Day On Beetle Rock Page 16