I could not long keep a bird-lover studying a chipmunk. In a few minutes we started again on our way up the mountain. Each side of our primitive wood road was bordered with ferns in their first tender green, many of them still wearing their droll little hoods. Forward marched the Enthusiast; breathlessly I followed. Up one little hill, down another, over a third we hastened.
"See!" I said, hoping to arrest the tireless steps; "on that tree I saw yesterday a scarlet tanager."
"Oh, did you?" she said carelessly, pausing not an instant in her steady tramp.
Then rose the note we were listening for, far to the left of the road.
"He's over there!" she cried eagerly, leaving the path, and pushing in the direction of the sound. "But I'm afraid I shall tire you," she added. "You sit down here, and I'll just go on a little."
"No, indeed!" I answered hastily, for I knew well what "just go on a little" meant,--I had tried it before: it meant pass out of sight in two minutes, and out of hearing in one more, so absorbed in following an elusive bird note that everything else would be forgotten. "No, indeed!" I repeated. "I shall not be left in these woods; where you go I follow."
"But I won't go out of sight," she urged, her conscience contending with her eager desire to proceed, for well she knew that I did not take my woods by storm in this way.
I said nothing in reply, but I had no intention of being left, for I did not know what dwellers the forest might contain, and I had a vivid remembrance of being greatly startled, only a day or two before, by unearthly cries in these very woods; of seeing a herd of young cattle rushing frantically away, turning apprehensive glances toward the sounds, and huddling in a frightened heap down by the bars, while the strange cries came nearer and nearer, till I should not have been surprised to see any sort of a horror emerge; of calling out to the farmer whom I met at the door, "Oh, there's something dreadful up in the woods!" and his crushing reply, "Yes, I heard it. It's a fox barking; we hear one now and then."
I cast no doubts on the veracity of that farmer, though I could not but remember the license men sometimes allow themselves when trying to quiet fears they consider foolish; nor did his solution seem to account satisfactorily for the evident terror of the cattle, which had lived in those woods all their lives, and had no reason to fear the "bark" of a fox. I preferred, therefore, not to encounter any such eccentric "fox" alone; hence I refused to listen to my friend's entreaties, but simply followed on, over fallen tree-trunks, under drooping branches, and through unyielding brush; now sinking ankle-deep in a pile of dead leaves, now catching my hair in a broken branch, and now nearly falling over a concealed root; wading through swamps, sliding down banks, cutting and tearing our shoes, and leaving bits of our garments everywhere. On we went recklessly, intent upon one thing only,--seeing the bird who, enthroned on his tree-top, calmly and serenely uttered his musical "see-e he-e-re!" while we struggled and scrambled and fought our way down below.