"The colts!" exclaimed Halse, forgetting the eagle. "Dead!"
The big bird raised its head, then rose into the air with mighty flaps and sailed away. We watched it glide off along the ridge, and saw it alight in an oak, the branches of which bent and swayed beneath its weight.
"All dead!" cried Halstead, gazing around. "Isn't that hard!"
The eagle had been tearing at their tongues, which protruded as they lay on the ground. There was a strong odor from the carcasses.
"Been dead some time," Halse exclaimed. "What killed them?"
We examined them attentively. Not the slightest mark, nor wound, could be detected. But a lot of fresh splinters lay at the foot of the pine stub, close by them.
"Must have been lightning," I said, glancing up. "That's just what it was! They were struck during that big shower."
We went to the house with the unwelcome tidings. At first the folks would scarcely believe our account. Then there were rueful looks.
"Ah, those pine stubs ought to have been cut down," exclaimed the Old Squire. "Dangerous things to be left standing in pastures!"
Later in the day we took shovels and went to the pasture, with Asa Doane, to bury the dead animals. While this was going on, the eagle came back and sailed about, high overhead.
"Leave one carcass above ground," said Asa. "That old chap will light here again. You can shoot him then, or catch him in a trap."
So we left Black Hawk unburied, and bringing over an old fox-trap, fastened a large stick of wood to it and set it near. During the day we saw the eagle hovering about the spot, also a great flock of crows, cawing noisily, and next morning when we went over to see if any of them had got into the trap, both trap and stick were gone.
"Must have been the eagle," said Addison. "A crow could never have carried off that trap!" But as neither trap nor eagle was anywhere in sight, we concluded that we had lost the game.
Several days passed, when one morning we heard a pow-wow of crows down in the valley beyond the Little Sea. A flock of them were circling about a tree-top, charging into it.
"Owl, or else a raccoon, I guess," said Addison. "Crows are always hectoring owls and 'coons whenever they happen to spy one out by day."
Thinking that perhaps we might get a 'coon, we took the gun and went down there. But on coming near, instead of a raccoon, lo! there was our lost eagle, perched in the tree-top, with a hundred crows scolding and flapping him. He saw us, and started up as if to fly off, but fell back, and we heard a chain clank.
"Hard and fast in that trap!" exclaimed Addison. The stick and trap had caught among the branches. The big bird was a prisoner. We wished to take him alive, but to climb a tall basswood, and bring down an eagle strong enough to carry off a twelve-pound clog and trap, was not a feat to be rashly undertaken. Addison was obliged to shoot the bird before climbing after him. It was a fine, fierce-looking eagle, measuring nearly six feet from tip to tip of its wings. Its beak was hooked and very strong, and its claws an inch and a half long, curved and exceedingly sharp.
Addison deemed it a great prize, for it was not a common bald eagle, but a much darker bird. After reading his Audubon, he pronounced it a Golden Eagle and wrote a letter describing its capture, which was published in several New York papers. Gramp gave him all the following day to "mount" the eagle as a specimen. In point of fact, he was nearer three days preparing it. It looked very well when he had it done. I remember only that its legs were feathered down to the feet.
CHAPTER XX
CEDAR BROOMS AND A NOBLE STRING OF TROUT
It was a part of Gram's household creed, that the wood-house and carriage-house could be properly swept only with a cedar broom. Brooms made of cedar boughs, bound to a broom-stick with a gray tow string, were the kind in use when she and Gramp began life together; and although she had accepted corn brooms in due course, for house work, the cedar broom still held a warm corner in her heart. "A nice new cedar broom is the best thing in the world to take up all the dust and to brush out all the nooks and corners," she used to say to Theodora and Ellen; and when, at stated intervals, it became necessary, in her opinion, to clean the wood-house and other out-buildings, or the cellar, she would generally preface the announcement by saying to them at the breakfast table, "You must get me some broom-stuff, to-day, some of that green cedar down in the swamp below the pasture. I want enough for two or three brooms. Sprig off a good lot of it and get the sprigs of a size to tie on good."
The girls liked the trip, for it gave them an opportunity to gather checkerberries, pull "young ivies," search for "twin sisters" and see the woods, birds and squirrels, with a chance of espying an owl in the swamp, or a hawk's nest in some big tree; or perhaps a rabbit, or a mink along the brook.
If they could contrive to get word of their trip to Catherine Edwards and she could find time to accompany them, so much the more pleasant; for Catherine was better acquainted with the woods and possessed that practical knowledge of all rural matters which only a bright girl, bred in the country with a taste for rambling about, ever acquires.
A morning proclamation to gather broom-stuff having been issued at about this time, the three girls set off an hour or two after dinner for the east pasture; Mrs. Edwards, who was a very kind, easy-going woman, nearly always allowed Catherine to accompany our girls. Kate, in fact, did about as she liked at home, not from indulgence on the part of her mother so much as from being a leading spirit in the household. She was very quick at work; and her mother, instead of having to prompt her, generally found her going ahead, hurrying about to get everything done early in the day. Then, too, she was quick-witted and knew how to take care of herself when out from home. Mrs. Edwards always appeared to treat Kate more as an equal than a daughter. There are children who are spoiled if allowed to have their own way, and others who can be trusted to take their own way without the least danger of injury, and whom it is but an ill-natured exercise of authority to restrict to rules.
The Old Squire was breaking greensward in the south field that afternoon with Addison and Halse driving the team which consisted of a yoke of oxen and two yokes of steers, the latter not as yet very well "broken"
to work. My inexperienced services were not required; but to keep me out of hurtful idleness, the old gentleman bade me pick up four heaps of stones on a stubble field near the east pasture wall. It was a kind of work which I did not enjoy very well, and I therefore set about it with a will to get it done as soon as possible.
I had nearly completed the fourth not very large stone pile, when I heard one of the girls calling me from down in the pasture, below the field. It was Ellen. She came hurriedly up nearer the wall. "Run to the house and get Addison's fish-hook and line and something for bait!" she exclaimed. "For there is the greatest lot of trout over at the Foy mill-pond you ever saw! There's more than fifty of them. Such great ones!"
"Why, how came you to go over there?" said I; for the Foy mill-pond was fully a mile distant, in a lonely place where formerly a saw-mill had stood, and where an old stone dam still held back a pond of perhaps four acres in extent. The ruins of the mill with several broken wheels and other gear were lying on the ledges below the dam; and two curiously gnarled trees overhung the bed of the hollow-gurgling stream. Alders had now grown up around the pond; and there were said to be some very large water snakes living in the chinks of the old dam. It was one of those ponds the shores of which are much infested by dragon-flies, or "devil's darn-needles," as they are called by country boys,--the legend being that with their long stiff bodies, used as darning needles, they have a mission, to sew up the mouths of those who tell falsehoods.
"Oh, Kate wanted to go," replied Ellen. "We went by the old logging road through the woods from the cedar swamp. She thought we would see a turtle on that sand bank across from the old dam, if we sat down quietly and waited awhile. The turtles sometimes come out on that sand bank to sun themselves, she said. So we went over and sat down, very still, in the little path at the top of the dam wall. The sun shone down into the water. We could see the bottom of the pond for a long way out. Kate was watching the sand bank: and so was I; but after a minute or two, Theodora whispered, 'Only see those big fish!' Then we looked down into the water and saw them, great lovely fish with spots of red on their sides, swimming slowly along, all together, circling around the foot of the pond as if they were exploring. Oh, how pretty they looked as they turned; for they kept together and then swam off up the pond again.
"Kate whispered that they were trout. 'But I never saw so many,' she said, 'nor such large ones before; and I never heard Tom nor any of the boys say there were trout here.'
"We thought they had gone perhaps and would not come again," Ellen continued. "But in about ten minutes they all came circling back down the other shore of the pond, keeping in a school together just as when we first saw them. We sat and watched them till they came around the third time, and then Kate said, 'One of us must run home and tell the boys to come with their hooks.' I said that I would go, and I've run almost all the way. Now hurry. I'll rest here till you come. Then we will scamper back."
In a corner of the vegetable garden where I had dug horse-radish a few mornings before, I had seen some exceedingly plethoric angle-worms; and after running to the wood-house and securing a fish-hook, pole and line which Addison kept there, ready strung, I seized an old tin quart, and going to the garden, with a few deep thrusts of the shovel, turned out a score or two of those great pale-purple, wriggling worms. These I as hastily hustled into the quart along with a pint or more of the dirt, then snatching up my pole, ran down to the field where Nell was waiting for me, seated on one of my lately piled stone heaps.
"Come, hurry now," said she; and away we went over the wall and through brakes and bushes, down into the swamp, and then along the old road in the woods, till we came out at the high conical knoll, covered with sapling pines, to the left of the old mill dam. There we espied Kate and Theodora sitting quietly on a log.
"Oh, we thought that you never would come," said the former in a low tone. "But creep along here. Don't make a noise. They've come around six times, Ellen, since you went away. I never saw trout do so before. I believe they are lost and are exploring, or looking for some way out of this pond. I guess they came down out of North Pond along the Foy Brook; for they are too large for brook trout. They will be back here in a few minutes, again. Now bait the hook and drop in before they come back.
Then sit still, and when they come, just move the bait a little and I think you'll get a bite."
I followed this advice and sat for some minutes, dangling a big angle-worm out in the deep water, off the inner wall of the dam, while my three companions watched the water. Presently Theodora whispered that they were coming again; and then I saw what was, indeed, from a piscatorial point of view, a rare spectacle. First the water waved deep down, near the bottom, and seemed filled with dark moving objects, showing here and there the sheen of light brown and a glimmer of flashing red specks, as the sunlight fell in among them. For an instant I was so intent on the sight, that I quite forgot my hook. "Bob it now,"
whispered Kate, excitedly.
I had scarcely given my hook a bob up and down when, with a grand rush and snap, a big trout grabbed worm, hook and all. Instinctively I gave a great yank and swung him heavily out of the water, my pole bending half double. The trout was securely hooked, or I should have lost him, for he fell first on some drift logs and slid down betwixt them into the water again. Seizing the line in my hands, since the pole was too light for the fish, I contrived to lift him up and land him high and dry on the dam, close at the feet of the girls.
"Well done!" Theodora whispered. "Oh, isn't he a noble great one, and how like sport he jumps about! Too bad to take his life when he's so handsome and was having such a good time among his mates!"
"Unhook him quick and throw in again!" cried Kate. "Be careful he don't snap your fingers. He's got sharp teeth. Don't let him leap into the water. That's good! We'll keep him behind this log. Now bait again with a good new worm."
"But they've gone," said Theodora. "They darted away when you pulled this one out. It scared them."
I had experienced some difficulty in disengaging my hook from the trout's jaw, but at length put on another worm and dropped in again, not a little excited over my catch.
"I'm afraid they will not come around again," said Ellen. Kate, too, thought it doubtful whether we would see anything more of the school. "I guess they will beat a retreat up to North Pond," said she.
We sat quietly waiting for eight or ten minutes and were losing hope fast, when lo! there they all came again--swimming evenly around the foot of the pond in the deep part, as before, winnowing the water slowly with their fins.
Again I waited till my hook was in the midst of the school; and this time I had scarcely moved it, when another snapped it. I had resolved not to jerk quite so hard this time; but in my excitement I pulled much harder than was necessary to hook the trout and again swung it out and against the wall of the dam. With a vigorous squirm the fish threw himself clean off the hook; but by chance I grabbed him in my hands, as he did so, and threw him over the dam among the raspberry briars--safe.
"Well done again," said Theodora.
In a trice I had rebaited my hook and dropped in a third time; but as before the vagrant school had moved on. They had seemed alarmed for the moment by the commotion, and darted off with accelerated speed. But we now had more confidence that they would return and again settled ourselves to wait.
"Oh, I want to catch one!" exclaimed Ellen.
"I wish we had more hooks," said Kate. "We would fish at different points around the pond."