throng to welcome her upon her way,And roses laugh out into bloom for glee
That Summer is awake again – so she
Who sleeps, snow-still and white, will waken when
The Day dawns – and will live for us again.
A COUPLE OF VAGABONDS
Vagabonds, vagrants, tramps, – the class has never been entirely confined to humanity, – those careless, happy-go-easy, dishonest, unterrified beings to whom the world is an oyster, and often such a one as is not worth the opening, sometimes possess an interest to the observer, entirely disconnected with pity. They always lead reprehensible lives, and usually die disgracefully. They are amusing because of the exaggerated obliquity of their careers, and are, beasts and men alike, droll with a drollery that is three-quarters original sin. Among animals, at least, there are few cases of actual misfortune, though sometimes there is that most pitiable and forlorn creature, a dog that has lost his master, or that bit of cruelty and crime which has its exemplification in an old horse that has been turned out to die. Ordinarily the cases of animal depravity one encounters are so by race and ineradicable family habit, and are beyond the pale of charity and outside the legitimate field of brotherly love. One does not care what becomes of them, and least of all thinks of trying to reform them. But they usually take care of themselves, after a fashion that excludes all thought of pity. Even among the higher animals there are, as with humanity, occasional cases of extraordinary depravity. I know at this moment of a beautiful horse, with a white hind foot, and the blood of a long line of aristocrats in his veins, who wears an iron muzzle and two halter-chains, whose stall is the cell of a demon, who has made his teeth meet in the flesh of two or three of his keepers, and who is yet sufficiently sane to try to beat all his competitors on the track, and to often succeed. I know a little gray family dog, terrier from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail, kind to all whom he knows, who is yet the veriest crank of his kind. He hates everything that wears trousers, will not come when called with the kindest intentions, attacks all other dogs, big and little, who intrude within his line of vision, and confines his friendships exclusively to people who wear skirts and bonnets. He wears his heavy coat all summer because he has said to the family collectively that he will not be clipped; and, when an attempt of that kind is made, shows his teeth, even to the little girl who owns him. He reminds one of the incorrigible youth of an otherwise God-fearing family, and has been let go in his ways because he is too ugly and plucky to spend the time upon. I know a cat, now not more than half-grown, with a handsome ash-colored coat and a little white neck-tie, who is already as much a tiger as though born in the wilds of Africa. His playful bites draw blood, and his unsheathed claws are a terror, even when one is stroking his back. His tail quivers and his eyes have a tigerish expression, even when he is but catching a ball of yarn. He was after mice, and caught them, in his early infancy, and he was crouching and skulking after things when he should have been lapping milk. It is plainly foreseen that he will never be a family cat, and will take to the alleys and back fences before he is grown. He has in him, more than other cats have, the vagabond and depraved instinct – not amenable to Christian influences.
But the two persons of whom I shall doubtless seem to have as full recollection here as their characters justify belong to the extensive family of natural vagabonds, and first dawned upon me in the days when there was a frontier. I was in those days perfectly hardened to a bed on the ground, and was amused with the companionship of pack-mules. I was dependent for mental stimulus upon the stories of the camp-fire, and for recreation upon the wild realm in which the only changes that could come were sunrise and evening, clouds, wind, storms. There was a lonely vastness so wide that it became second nature to live in it and almost to love it, and a silence so dense that it became companionship. There was then no dream of anything that was to come. The march of empire had not touched the uttermost boundary. We wondered why we were there. And the blindest of all the people about this wonderful empire were those who knew it best. I really expected then to watch and chase Indians for the remainder of my natural life; looked upon them and their congeners as permanent institutions; made it a part of business to know them as well as possible; and wondered all the while at the uselessness of the government policy in occupying, even with a few soldiers, so hopeless a territory. Very often there was nothing else to do. All the books had been committed to memory previous to being absolutely worn out. It was a world where newspapers never came. When the friendship of certain animals becomes obtrusive, – when they take the place to you of those outsiders whom you do not really wish to know, but who are there nevertheless, – you are likely to come to understand them very well indeed, and to find in after years that they seem to come under the head of persons rather than creatures – the casual wild creatures of whom one ordinarily catches a glimpse or two in the course of a lifetime.
There was a bushy and exalted tail often seen moving leisurely along above the taller grasses that lined the prairie trail. One might encounter it at any hour, or might not see it for many days. I finally came to look upon this plume with something more than the interest attaching to a mere vagrant polecat, and even ceased to regard the end that bore it as the one specially to be avoided, however common the impression that it is so. In civilization and in the books nobody had ever accused the parti-colored creature of other than a very odorous reputation; and the tricks of his sly life – such as rearing an interesting and deceptively pretty family under the farmer's corn-crib, and refusing to be ejected thence; visiting, with fowl intent, the hen-house; sucking eggs; catching young ducks; and forcing the pedestrian to go far around him upon the occasion of a chance meeting, were condoned as matters that could not be helped in the then condition of human ingenuity and invention. With us, on the plains, he had acquired another and more terrible reputation. Nobody knows how information becomes disseminated in the wilderness, but it seemed to be spread with a rapidity usually only known in a village of some three hundred inhabitants, with a Dorcas Society; and we came to know, from authentic instances, that his bite, and not his perfume, was dangerous. In 1873, the Medical Herald, printed at the metropolis of Leavenworth, stated that a young man sleeping in a plains camp was bitten on the nose by one of the beasts. Awaking, he flung his midnight visitor off, and it immediately bit his companion, upon whom it unfortunately alighted. Both of these unfortunates died of hydrophobia.
The same year a citizen came to the U. S. Army surgeon at Fort Harker, Kansas, having been bitten through the nose by a mephitis while asleep. He had symptoms of hydrophobia, and shortly afterwards died of that disease. The next case of which printed record was made was that of a young man who, while sleeping on the ground, was bitten through the thumb. The writer states that the "animal had to be killed before the thumb could be extracted." This man also died of hydrophobia in the town of Russell, in western Kansas. Other cases are recorded about this time, with less detail.
I mention these instances, substantiated in cold print in a medical journal, merely to show that what we thought we knew was not a mere frontier superstition. With a righteous hatred did we hate the whole mephitis family. The little prairie rattlesnake often crept into the blankets at night for the sake of warmth; and it is a noticeable fact that he did not "rattle" and did not bite anybody while enjoying their unintended hospitality, and that such things were not much thought of. But the sneaking presence of a skunk, usually considered merely a ridiculous and disagreeable creature, would always call out the force for his extermination, promptly, and by some means.
Yet mephitis has the air of seeming rather to like, than to seek to avoid, mankind. It is one of his curious traits. You cannot certainly tell whether he really does; but, if he does not, it is strange with what frequency he is encountered, exhibiting on such occasions a singular confidence, not in any case reciprocated. It is certain that he has crossed a railroad bridge to visit the bustling metropolis of the Missouri Valley, and been seen complacently ambling the streets there at midnight. If, in crossing a "divide" or threading a reedy creek-bottom, there is seen before you one of those imposing plumes before referred to, standing erect above the long grass, without any perceptible attachment, and moving slowly along, it will be prudent not to permit any curiosity concerning the bearer of it to tempt you to a nearer acquaintance. Indeed,
