Dipper of Copper Creek (American Woodland Tales)

by Jean Craighead George

  As the grandsons finished high school they went to work in Gunnison to help their mother support the younger children. Doug was one of the younger members of the family. Bill was not sure where he stood in the family line-up, but he was sure he was a fine lad. After all, he wanted to mine ore.

  Doug was of medium height, broad and stocky like Bill. He had heavy brown hair, a well-defined chin, and good big features that already had a bony masculine quality. Bill was a little disturbed by the honesty of the face, for a good prospector could not be telling all he knew; but he felt a summer under his tutelage would take care of that.

  Bill concluded with some pleasure that Doug did not look unlike himself, and was pleased to see the Smith strain so strong. He was about to tell Tom about it when he saw that the plow driver was already seated in the cab, gunning the machine. Bill watched him edge on up through Gothic. Just beyond the black walls of Lee’s Tavern, Tom turned the machine in a wide arc and started back. Doug was standing beside Bill now, watching the plow move along the deserted main street of Gothic heading toward the bridge at Copper Creek.

  When the plow was out of sight, Doug leaned down and picked the supplies out of the wet snow. He carried them into the cabin and placed them on the table. Bill followed him in, stirred the stove for the sixth time that day and added fuel. He turned and faced his grandson. The boy spoke first.

  “Well, Grandpa, which crazy story about you is the real one?”

  “None of them,” Bill whispered. “I’m an old prospector, and I tell everyone I meet a different story.”

  “Are you really rich, Grandpa?”

  Bill laughed aloud, and felt so good he reached for the sourdough starter and poured a bit into a bowl.

  “Rich?” he asked, as he threw sugar, salt, and baking soda into the bubbly white mass. He chuckled while he beat down the rising thick batter. “Rich? Wait till you see what I have on Mt. Avery.”

  He picked up the bowl and flung open the door with his knee. The spoon in the batter thumped with a fine deep note. Whispering Bill thrust his chin toward the towering peak of Mt. Avery.

  “Up there,” he said, “where the wind screams and the rocks roar.”

  Doug looked from the mountain to the man, then stared at a bright pendant that hung on a gold chain around his neck. The pendant was a ground stone splotched generously with ore.

  “What’s that, Grandpa?” Doug asked. Whispering Bill closed the door with his heel, placed a skillet on the stove and dropped the first two pancakes into it. He spoke in a quiet, weather-beaten voice.

  “Gold, boy. That’s gold.”

  CINCLUS

  CINCLUS stood on the rock in the middle of Richard’s Rapids and listened to Whisky reporting the whereabouts of Molly, the long-tailed weasel. When the jay called somewhere near the prospector’s cabin, Cinclus lost interest and boated out on an eddy behind the rock. He went down into the icy dark water to feed on the spring crustaceans that were hiding between the rocks and stones. Cinclus was an extraordinary bird, no other passerine, or, for that matter, no other bird could live as he did in the breath-taking waterfalls of the alpine streams.

  His slate-gray body was squat and compact, looking much like a worn glacial stone. Everything about him was designed for his life in the pounding waters. His tail was stubby and square; it would not hinder him in the fast-moving currents. His rounded wings were short, and the breast muscles that pulled them were large and strong. He could use his wings for flying, rowing, and maneuvering under water.

  His plumage was also miraculous. It was fluffy and loose; yet he could plunge into the white foaming water and come up absolutely dry. His long, strong legs gave him the appearance of a shore bird, and they enabled him to wade into the shallow edges of the streams. His elongated toes ended in sharp, curved claws that held him to the rocks and stones beneath the rushing waters. They did not appear to be too different from the toes and claws of many other perching birds, still they held him to the rock surfaces in the swift waters.

  His bill was shaped like an awl and with it he could pry into crevices in the rocks and under stones and boulders as he searched for food. Each long, linear nostril was covered with a small scale that capped off the water when he went into the pools and cascades.

  Cinclus came up from the bottom of the ice-filled stream and floated down on the current. Just before the water plunged over the falls, he stepped lightly up on the big rock, dipped and sang.

  The water ouzel would have been as inconspicuous as a shadow were it not for his flashing white eyelid. It was covered with a short, dense mat of pearly white feathers, and every time he blinked, which was almost as frequently as he dipped, his eyelid made a white flash. The dipping and the flashing made the bird stand out against the stones and the water.

  In the Andes, in the Alps, in the Cascades, in the Himalayas, in the Rockies—wherever the white foam of the pounding mountain streams spills down into the valleys—there the dippers are at home. No other bird crowds them, for nature has evolved only the dippers to fill these niches of lonely wilderness beauty.

  Cinclus stopped his song, for he saw another bird dipping in counter-movement to the downward flow of Copper Creek. He winged from his rock to investigate. The male ouzel of Judd Falls was arriving at his summer nesting territory.

  Cinclus challenged him with a defiant “dek, ek, ek-ek,” but did not chase him, for Cinclus was a first-year male and had no claim to the waters he was in.

  The male of Judd Falls skimmed over his head, banked around the larger jutting outcrops and went up to the thunderous waterfall that dropped one hundred feet down the mountainside.

  Judd Falls was part of the same geologic formation as Richard’s Rapids. Millions of years ago when the earth buckled and heaved up the Rocky Mountains, a hard layer of diorite granite had been forced up through the softer limestones. The granite had resisted the cutting and digging of Copper Creek, while the limestones above and below the granite wore away. Judd Falls was the upper drop over the granite intrusion, and Richard’s Rapids was the lower drop.

  Cinclus watched the old, experienced male return to his territory and burst into song. Feeling that perhaps Richard’s Rapids would be his own home, he flew from his rock and winged swiftly through the canyon to look at this land. He alighted on the shore opposite Bill’s cabin and snapped up numerous cold insect larvae stirring numbly in the icy water.

  The bird floated into the swift current, and used the surface action of the water to carry him across the stream. Any lesser creature would have been washed under the bridge in the time it took Cinclus to gain the far shore, but the bird understood each eddy and current, and used them to propel himself.

  He ran up the shore, stopped and dipped by Whispering Bill’s old water bucket, still frozen in the earth. He scooted around it, stopped and called his piercing, “De-ek,” for smiling gleefully at him, her small white teeth clean and sharp between the furry lips, was Molly, the long-tailed weasel.

  Cinclus was in the air, spinning toward the far shore by the time Molly had circled the bucket and lunged at him. She missed, but whipped and danced on the shore to tell the frightened ouzel that it was only fun, and to come back and play her devilish game.

  Cinclus was back on his rock in Richard’s Rapids by the time Molly was done with her dancing. Molly shifted to more promising prey.

  In the dark shadows of the spruce grove, a sleepy ground squirrel was resting at the entrance of his winter den, smelling the sweet odors of the dawn of the mountain spring.

  He savored the last hours between sleep and the frantic three or four months of life that were before him. In this brief time he must raise young, bring them to independence, and harvest enough food from the mountain valley to make him fat and sleek for next winter’s long hibernation.

  His dry nose drew in the cold afternoon air, and he fluttered his hind legs as his blood warmed and slowly awakened him.

  His ears were neat and mouselike, his tail not much bigger than
a chipmunk’s. In fact, he looked very much like a chunky chipmunk with a light, black-bordered stripe down the side of his golden-mantled fur, but he had no stripes on his face.

  He pawed the snow at his den entrance and was about to pull himself to a pocket of rain water when he saw and scented Molly.

  Molly was ranging toward him. The golden-mantled ground squirrel slid back into his tunnel, kicked up dirt and needles to block the entrance, and put off his spring debut. He pushed far down into his tunnel, then climbed to a high, dry pocket that was lined with last year’s bedstraw weeds. Here he licked his cold feet, and slipped into a sleep lighter than his deep hibernation slumber.

  Although it was late in May and only the western slope was free of snow, the spring of the high country was lying just beneath the cover. In the moist meadows where patches of snow had already vanished, the pointed green shoots of the mountain iris were standing in the sun.

  More wonderful than the iris were the avalanche lilies. They arose and bloomed in the receding snow, and all through Gothic valley their gold heads bobbed against the ice. At night they closed their petals and withstood the freeze and the bitter winds that roared down from the peaks.

  The buttercups were also above the ground in the slowly opening alpine meadows, and many of the hardy mountain grasses were coloring the mountain clearings yellow-green.

  The brief, abundant plant life of the high Rockies had begun beneath the snow cover, for it must come to bloom and seed before the autumn of late August and the winter of mid-September. All the alpine life was racing against time. In the plant world, only the hardy perennial species survived the severity of the mountain sun, wind, and ice. The annuals of the lowlands could not mature their seeds in a season so short and they were eliminated at the foot of Gothic Valley.

  As the days passed, more and more life stirred in the high country. Like the golden-mantled ground squirrel, the hibernating mammals awakened slowly. The whistling marmot was one of these.

  The rock slide above Judd Falls faced the afternoon sun. The snow had melted from it and run into the creek almost a week ago. Still the marmot of that rock slide had come out on his desolate estate only once or twice for it was too early to forage in the almost lifeless land. It was better to lie half-asleep and half-hungry in his warm burrow than to fight the biting winds and be starved. The few scant blades of grass that he could find would be scarcely enough fuel to keep him warm.

  The slope in which the marmot slept was the wind-way for the howling draughts that rushed valleyward from the peaks of Red Mountain and White Mountain. Marmota, the marmot, was not satisfied with his territory, but last fall there had been numerous young marmots searching for a piece of land. Many had lost their lives. Marmota had been pushed and chased from several other areas. Winter was close upon him, the mountain tops were snow-covered. He had been chased into the talus slope above Judd Falls, and was about to be run off that by a young male, when he turned and fought.

  Marmota, the tired victor, dug his burrow while the first snow blew into the niches and cracks. He crawled into it in late September.

  In mid-April something aroused him from his deathlike sleep of hibernation. The temperature of the earth had not changed greatly and he could not see the wider arching of the sun, but his eyes were open, and he was coming to life like the seeds and the bulbs, deep in the earth. It was the breeding season for the marmots. After a week, the females returned to their burrows and Marmota retired to his rock slide to sleep until the meadows were green with grasses.

  It was the need for water that finally brought him out for the summer. He walked ponderously down his passageway and pushed away the earthen plug he had put in his burrow. The blinding alpine sun forced him to close his eyes, and he lay in his burrow until he was accustomed to the light. The sun warmed him, and presently he arose and remembered that he was desperately thirsty.

  He walked slowly down the side of the mountain to a brook that had its source in the melting ice field above the slide. Marmota drank as if he would never satisfy his thirst.

  The sun, the water, and the exercise loosened his muscles and he trotted back to his den with more spirit. Beside his doorway was a large rock. He stretched upon it and immediately slept. The sun burning through the high thin air warmed him to his belly.

  Marmota was not so deeply asleep that his nose was not working. It twitched and twitched, then stopped; and Marmota was on his feet and in his burrow, before the scent of the coyote was more than a faint wisp.

  Canis, the coyote, loped out of the spruce forest above the slide, and jogged down to the hole into which his prey had disappeared. His long dog-like nose sucked up the sweet scents of the marmot, and whetted his appetite for this large tasty rodent. Eager for this succulent game, he loped up to the talus slope looking for another marmot that might be a little drowsier than Marmota.

  Cinclus, the water ouzel, on his flight up the canyon saw the gray, shaggy Canis trotting along the rimrock above him. He called, “De-ek,” but without great feeling, for Canis was not a threat to the dipper. He was a predator, however, and deserved some recognition from a bird who was establishing his territory and waiting for a mate.

  His “De-ek” was answered with a strong, loud authoritative “DE-EK,” and a steely bird zoomed around the jutting spruce toward him. Cinclus fled before a storming male who had returned to his territory. Cinclus deeked and fought, but the male ouzel of Richard’s Rapids knew the territory too well. He chased Cinclus over the falls and into the Niobrara wall, before the younger bird remembered that it was there.

  In the tussle Cinclus left a few breast feathers at Richard’s Rapids, then took his leave.

  He winged past the cabin where Whispering Bill was saddling his horse, Lodestone, for young Doug. He swooped under the bridge and down through the meadowland. Suddenly, as if he had an inspiration, he banked and turned up the crystal branch of Copper Creek that cut around the foot of Gothic Peak.

  This fork was fed by the glacier that had cut the peaks at the head of the valley, Mt. Baldy and Mt. Belleview, while the other fork roared down from the glaciers and snowfields that hemmed Copper Lake, over which towered White Mountain and Mt. Avery.

  Cinclus flew faster and faster, following the creek around the sharp bends and past black-widowed cabins. He heard the splashing of the rollicking runnels spilling down Gothic Mountain as the snow fields melted.

  He only glanced at the bubbling cascades under him, for he was moving upstream, knowing with the instinct for water signs inherent in a dipper bird that a cascade was not far away.

  As he passed the old assay house that stood at the top of the limestone canyon, a Townsend’s solitaire winged out for an insect and returned to the wall. Suddenly he heard the falls. He dashed around the last bend and dropped onto a smooth black boulder at the foot of the veil of water that was Vera Falls.

  He dipped and dipped and dipped, sang, and plunged into the roiling foam of the falls. He rode to the bottom on a swirl, grasped a minute crack in a boulder with his toes and listened to the noisy floor of the stream. Rocks hitting rocks, stones being ground into sand, pools being dug, canyon walls being slowly undermined.

  The sun penetrated into the depths of the stream, for the water was like glass. Cinclus poked around the rock until he found some small crustaceans to eat, then he pumped his wings and bounced to the surface.

  Around and around he swam, cork-like, for he sat higher on the water than a duck. He let a forceful current sweep him downstream, turn him around and around and carry him under the far moss-covered bank. He ran ashore and pecked the pebbles as he hunted food.

  That was enough of the bottom of the falls. He flew up the cascade, riding high enough to keep his breast above it, and low enough to flick his wings in the foam. He alighted on a great boulder that divided the waterfall into two parts. Before him was a narrow flume into which the entire stream was squeezed. It was leaping and roaring. Above it was another falls, a man-made dam, built by the sil
ver miners of Gothic to course the water into their stamp mill. The dam had fared better than the mill, for where the mill had been there remained only an old rusted boiler and gooseberries and aspens.

  Above the miners’ dam, the stream spread out and rippled peacefully through an alpine meadow.

  Cinclus dipped up and down in great excitement, then flew up the flume, over the dam, and into the meadow. He coasted to a rock bar and gathered many mouthfuls of the larvae of the caddis fly. The meadow stream abounded in this food so important to the diet of dippers.

  A rustle in the willows startled him, and he flew across the stream. Odocoileus, the mule deer, was bringing her fawn of the season to the stream for the first time. Cinclus relaxed as he watched the young animal spread its front feet to sniff the water. Odocoileus was the most nervous of the three. She kept turning her big funnel-ears into the wind, and tasting the breezes to the right and left.

  The fawn was very young. It had been born only a week before, and was still awkward and unskilled. Cinclus felt the youngness of it with some pleasure, for this was the beginning of the season for the babies of the wilderness, a most pleasant time in the high country where the young frolicked openly in their playgrounds far from the pressure of man.

  The fawn saw the bird dipping on the sandbar. The movement fascinated him. The bird kept going up and down. A nudge from his mother brought the fawn to her heels and he followed her reluctantly into the willow grove. He looked back before he came to the dark spruce forest, and saw that the bird was still bouncing.

  Cinclus spent the next few days singing on every rock and root of his waterway. His trilling song of the water and rocks was sung to Vera Falls. The falls out-voiced him with a booming roar.

  Cinclus knew that other ears heard that song. A young male coming up the stream must have heard it for he flew high above the falls and disappeared into the upper waters of the stream.