A gentle tale of children learning about nature.It was Mid-May's eve and all the forces of white magic were abroad. Brownies, elves, pixies, leprechauns, fairies of field and forest—it was their night of power. With so many spells floating about, it was no wonder that even the captain began to dabble in magic. The deep veranda where he gathered the Band was in a midst of moonshine filtering through the green of the overshadowing beeches. On the wide rail he laid before them four Indian arrow-heads wonderfully chiseled and grooved, the work of forgotten warriors a thousand years dead. One of quartz crystal seemed carved out of ice; another was made of murky black flint; a third had been fashioned from milk-white chalcedony; while the last was of obsidian, like smoky glass.
"They are magic arrow-heads," said the captain, impressively.
"Where did you get them?" inquired First Lieutenant Trottie.
"Never mind," returned the captain, darkly.
"How do they magic?" chorused the rest of the Band.
"All kinds of ways," the captain assured them. "Keep one of these arrow-heads in your pocket, save your money, and you 'll never die poor. Carry one in your mouth, so that you can't talk, and walk-and listen and learn, and you 'll know the notes of all the birds. One worn around your neck makes you safe from grizzly bears, wolves, panthers, and cobras anywhere in this State. Hold one in your left hand and look in the right place, and you 'll find the nest of any bird."
"I have n't any pocket," said Corporal Alice-Palace, the littlest of the Band, "but I want one norful."
"So do I!" bellowed Sergeant Henny-Penny; while all the other officers of the Band expressed similar sentiments. As for the privates—there were n't any.
"In order to become a member of the Order of the Arrowhead," announced the captain firmly, "it will be necessary to find out some important secret of the Wild Folk."
"How nimportant?" queried Alice-Palace.
"I '11 be the judge," explained the captain.
Began a month of hurryings and scurryings. It was First Lieutenant Trottie who first qualified. He had ridden on his wheel clear to the edge of Wolf Island Marsh, where once a wolf pack made its last stand long before the Revolution. As he lay on a little ledge of smoky quartz thrust like a wedge out into the marsh, he could see before him miles and miles of rippling rushes, stagnant pools, and trembling quagmires. The sweet, hot, wild scent of the great marsh was in his nostrils, compounded of sun and wind and the steam of growing things mixed with little puffs of fragrance from flowers hidden deep down in the grass. Here and there the smooth petals of wild roses showed among the rushes, like coral set in jade. The pale, wind-driven petals of rue-anemones trembled above their trefoil leaves on the sides of burnt tussocks half covered with new grass; among the pools, marsh-marigolds gleamed like gold, and white violets showed the finest of umber-brown traceries in the center of their petals.
The shadows began to lengthen, and across the darkening meadows sounded the songs of the field-sparrows. First came four minor notes and then a long sweet trill like the tinkling of fairy bells. Suddenly, from over beyond the little ridge where the pasture-land met the marsh, came a sound that sent Trottie crawling up to the slope like an Indian scout.
"Bloop! bloop! bloop! bloop!" it thudded, as if some giant were pouring water out of an enormous bottle far underground. At the very edge of the marsh stood a bird between two and three feet high, of a streaked brown color, with a black stripe down each side of its neck. Even as Trottie watched, the long neck was hunched far down between the shoulders and then thrust slowly up again. As it straightened in sections, there sounded across the field the same thudding, bubbling, watery note. After each "bloop" came the click of the singer's long yellow bill as it opened and shut, until, at the final note, it was thrust straight skyward. For a moment the bird stood without moving, and then, hunching its neck, stepped stealthily toward the rushes, looking exactly like a little old humpbacked man as it walked away. Once in cover it stood motionless and seemed to melt away, so exactly did its color blend with the brown sedges and rushes where it stood. Through the twilight Trottie hurried home and after supper told his story to the Band, who had met under the beech-tree. When he had finished, the captain shook him solemnly by the hand, much to his embarrassment.
"You have learned how an American bittern booms," he said. "Once there was a great naturalist named Thoreau, who lived night and day among the Wild Folk. Yet he died believing that a bittern boomed by pumping water in and out of its beak. Try now to find a ruffed grouse drumming or a woodcock singing his flight-song in the dark. In the meantime—choose!" and in the captain's outstretched hand lay the four magic arrow-heads. Trottie took the black flint.
"One of the very best," the captain assured him. "Carry it with you always. Be watchful and brave and kind and silent, and you will have the freedom of the Land of the Wild Folk."
The very next day Second Lieutenant Honey found his way to that marsh. He lay down on the same ledge and waited, but there was no sight nor sound of the wary old bittern. Onlyfar away in the blue sky a pair of hawks wheeled and circled over the marsh.
"Geck! geck! geck!" they called, something like a flicker except that the tone was flatter. As Honey watched them through his field-glasses he noticed that both of the birds showed a snowy patch just over the tail and that the smaller of the two was of a blue-gray color, while its white under-wings were tipped with black, almost like a sea-gull. The larger bird was brown, and he knew that it was the female, for the captain "had already taught them that among the hawk-people the female is usually the larger. As he watched he noticed that she circled nearer to the Sround than the other, and through his field-glasses he saw a strange thing: every time she passed over a certain stunted bush, she would drop her feet, and her yellow talons would hang dangling and clutching in the air for an instant, to be drawn up as she passed on in her flight. That night he reported to the Band what he had seen.
"Could you find that bush again?" was all that the captain asked.
"I 'm almost certain I could," responded the second lieutenant, "for it was just the shape of a big beaver."
"We '11 hunt that beaver the first thing to-morrow morning." remarked the captain, and he explained to the Band that those were marsh-hawks, the only kind of hawks which nest on the ground, and that the mother bird can never fly over her nest without stretching out her claws, as if she wanted to clutch and brood her dear-loved eggs.
The next morning just at sunrise a funny procession left Beechwood. First came the captain on Trottie's bicycle, which he had commandeered for the trip. Sitting on the handlebars in front of him was Corporal Alice-Palace, with her feet swinging in space. Next came Trottie riding the corporal's wheel, which was so small for him that he had to ride with his legs doubled up like a frog, which made Second Lieutenant Honey and Sergeant Henny-Penny laugh so that they nearly fell off of their own wheels. Before they started, the captain admitted to the Band that he had been a wonderful bicyclist in his younger days, and rather gave them the impression that people used to come from miles around to see him perform. Perhaps the years had made a difference, or perhaps the corporal was heavier than she looked. At any rate, before they had covered half the distance, the captain was lagging far in the rear, even back of the conservative Henny-Penny, who always rode with much deliberation. However, the marsh was reached at last, and in single file, led by Second Lieutenant Honey, they started for the beaver bush. Ahead of them the marsh was dotted with round, burnt tussocks which looked like black skulls. The captain showed them how to jump from tussock to tussock so as to cross the marsh dry-shod. Unfortunately, one wretched tussock gave way under his weight and he went into the mud knee-deep, making a noise as he waded out like the "bloop" of the bittern, as the first lieutenant assured him.
Half-way to the bush, the mother hawk sprang from the ground and circled around them, screaming monotonously. It was Honey's right to look first. The moment he stepped past the spreading branches, the mother hawk dashed down through the air directly at him. Fifty feet away she folded her wings and dived at his head, falling through the air like a stone. With her half-open beak and fierce unflinching eyes and outspread talons she looked so dangerous that Honey shielded his face with both arms, while Alice-Palace grasped the long stick which she had insisted on carrying and hurried to the rescue. Her help, however, was not needed. Six feet away from the boy the bird swooped upward, and circles away until it was lost in the distance. Just beyond the bush lay the nest. It rested on a foundation of well-packed rushes several inches thick and was made of coarse grasses ringed around with rushes. The captain's folding rule showed the nest to be eight inches across and three inches deep. There under the open sky rested the bluish-white eggs, about the size of a small hen's-egg. By the nest lay a long barred feather, which was given to the corporal for bravery in action. For long the Band stood beside the nest. Some way it seemed to them all as i f they were sharing a secret with the sky and the wind and the sun and that even the vast, untamed, treacherous marsh had become their friend.
That evening Honey chose the obsidian arrow-head.
"That stone came from the heart of a volcano," the captain told the Band. "Once it belonged to a great medicine-man. Carry it with you by day and keep it under your pillow by night. Look and listen, and the birds and the animals will tell you all of their secrets."
Now remained only Sergeant Henny-Penny and Corporal Alice-Palace as candidates for the last two arrow-heads. The sergeant yearned for the clear quartz-crystal arrow-head with an exceeding great longing, while Alice-Palace felt that life held nothing more precious than that milk-white point of chalcedony stone. For some time neither of the candidates made much progress. The corporal found a robin's nest in a lilac-bush, and the sergeant, a worm's nest in an apple-tree, but the captain decided that neither of them was worthy of an arrow-head. Then came a day when Henny-Penny led the captain excitedly to a patch of woods on the edge of the sheep pasture. There he pointed out a large round nest of sticks some thirty feet from the ground in a pin-oak tree.
"Nothing but an old crow's nest," said the captain decisively; "you 'll have to do better than that."
That very afternoon found Henny-Penny again examining said nest, for some way he was convinced that it held a secret. Anyway, he had never seen the inside of a crow's nest. The pin-oak tree was too slippery to climb, but right opposite it grew a maple with lots of limbs, one of which grew out so that it nearly touched the oak just below the nest. Five minutes later found Henny-Penny perched on the pin-oak tree just under that crow's nest. Only when close to it did he notice that it was all thatched and chinked with dry brown leaves with a few green ones on top and that the nest had been roofed over. As he reached up a hand to investigate, something happened. Out from a round hole in the top of the nest, which the sergeant had not noticed, exploded a silvery-gray animal with a fluffy tail. Right down the back of the startled Henny-Penny it scrabbled, and then clattered down the tree and disappeared. It was some time before the shaken sergeant could convince himself that the animal was a gray squirrel and not a wild-cat. Recovering himself, he poked a stick cautiously into the hole. He touched something soft that moved, and Henny-Penny finally substituted his hand for the stick and pulled out a baby gray squirrel. It was bare and blind and pink and ugly, with a long naked tail and sprouting whiskers like a rat.
"Ee—ee—ee!" it observed shrilly. Instantly there was a clattering and a scrabbling, and up the other side of the tree came Mrs. Gray Squirrel almost to Henny-Penny's foot. There she clung, jerking her bushy tail and making little sobbing noises in her throat, while her big, beseeching eyes said plainly, "Don't hurt my babies!" Henny-Penny put the little squirrel carefully back into the warm nest and hurried down to find the captain and the rest of the Band. On hearing the story, a long ladder was-brought from the barn and the whole company hurried back to the tree and took turns in climbing up and looking at the baby squirrels. Mrs. Squirrel became so convinced at last that they meant no harm to her family that she stayed on a limb overhead and only scolded when she thought they were keeping her family too long out of the nest.
"It only shows," said the captain, that evening as they sat on the porch, "that it always pays to work things out for yourself. Why do you suppose it was that I did n't tell you a squirrel had rented that old nest?"
"Because you did n't know," suggested the quartermaster-general, sometimes known as Mothie. This made the Band laugh like anything, although the captain said that it was not the right answer at all.
Without a second's delay, the sergeant selected the crystal arrow-head, to the great delight of the corporal.
"Never lose it," said the captain, solemnly. "Study things out. Look at it every day, and before long there will be nothing which you cannot see through."
"Including the captain," supplemented Mothie.
Corporal Alice-Palace alone remained un-decorated. Although she climbed and dug and scrambled and explored, never a secret could she find. Then came the day when the whole Band went to visit Cousin Big Sam. There was Uncle Sam, Big Sam, Little Sam, and Little Sammee. There the captain, in spite of his rank, was only known as Little Sammee.
It was on the very tiptop of Pond Hill that the corporal's chance came. The Band had drunk deep from Apple-tree Spring, where tiny white shells danced in the bubbling water, and had passed under the white oak tree, where, seventy-five years before Uncle Sam had shot a wild pigeon in the days when that bird still lived in the land. They were following a wood-road past Hen's pine, which old Hen, an escaped slave who ruled the farm, had rescued from the wood-cutters. The cool wood-road was carpeted with moss and wound in and out among the trees and stopped to rest every now and then at round green circles where old charcoal-pits had set their green seals on the woods forever. Running ahead, Alice-Palace rounded a bend in the road and dashed right into Mrs. Ruffed Grouse and her family. Though taken by surprise, they never even hesitated. Beating her wings on the ground, the old bird crawled toward the corporal, whining like a hurt puppy, while before Alice-Palace's very eyes the little brood of chicks began to melt away. By the time the rest of the Band arrived they were all gone but one. Alice-Palace kept her eyes firmly fixed on the littlest one. Accordingly, she alone saw the tiny chick creep under a little brown leaf, which did not seem half large enough to shelter it. Later, when the band had given up trying to find the hidden covey, it was the corporal who showed them this last chick. Lying flat on the ground, with its bill tucked into the withered grass, it was hardly to be seen even when they looked closely. As Alice-Palace picked the chick up, it gave one loud peep and then lay back motionless in her hand. Instantly the mother bird was dashing herself against the corporal's feet, and, with outspread wings and lifted head, seemed to be offering herself as a ransom for the last of her brood. Although she seemed so unconcerned for her own safety, and so close, yet whenever any of the Band tried to touch her, she always managed to flop away just out of reach. At last Alice-Palace set the little bird safely on the ground and it disappeared at the edge of the clearing, followed by the old bird.
"Hurry," whispered the captain, and he rushed the Band hack into the woods where, from behind a big tree, they could get a clear view of the green circle. There they sat still as stones for nearly half an hour. Then, from far out in the woods came a single, soft, clucking call. Followed a resurrection. From all over the circle little grouse started up. Some came from under leaves; others wriggled out of tangles of grass; while one started up from a puff of brown wood-earth, where he had been lying in full sight although quite invisible. In single file they hurried like a line of little brown ghosts into the woods and disappeared.
In a moment there came to the listeners the sound of soft caressing little notes, and the captain told them that the grouse mother was brooding for a moment her rescued chicks under her warm wings.
Then and there, before they started home, the corporal received her decoration.
"It is the color of peace." said the captain, as he handed her the carved bit of chalcedony. "Wear it over your heart. Never harm, always help, and it will bring you the love of all the Wild Folk."
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