Many years ago, when it was the practice to hunt with dogs, the deer acquired the habit of running to the nearest water, where, by wading or swimming they could throw the dogs off the scent. Thus all deer trails or runways lead, sooner or later, to a stream, a pond or lake, where the deer has a chance of evading pursuit of his natural enemy. Now, while the game laws forbid hunting deer with dogs, and while dogs are not allowed to enter forests inhabited by deer, yet the inherited instinct of self-preservation of the latter persists, and whenever alarmed by the appearance of man, who in the mind of a deer is still associated with his other enemy – the dog, he immediately starts down his trail to the nearest water.
It was Bige's hope to "scare up" a deer on the other side of the mountain and drive him down the runway past my watch ground, while it was my job to shoot him as he passed by.
The fallen tree on which I sat was on the bank of the brook and about ten feet above the water, while in the opposite direction, through an open space in the bushes, I had a clear view of the runway about twenty yards distant.
Time passes slowly in the woods, when one is waiting for something to turn up. Also, it is essential that one sit quietly and make very few false motions when watching for a deer to approach. I had been sitting, with rifle across knees, what seemed a long time. The noises of the woods which suddenly cease when one walks through the forest, gradually returned. A wood-pecker started up his electric hammer and resumed the operation of drilling a deep hole into a pine stub a few rods away. A blue-jay made some sarcastic remarks about "Caleb" and then began swinging on his gate and creaking its rusty hinges. A red squirrel overhead, made unintelligible, but evidently derisive remarks about the intrusion of strangers, and then proceeded to cut off spruce cones and tried to drop them on my head. A kingfisher flew up the brook and shook a baby's tin rattle at me as he passed. An old hen partridge down the log-road was advising her children to "Quit! Quit! Quit!" but her chicks, who were now more than half grown, paid not the slightest attention to her warning but continued picking blue-berries just as if there were no enemies within a hundred miles. An owl on the limb of a tall birch demanded, in stentorian voice, to know "Who? Who? Who in – " Another fellow, way down the valley responded that he "could!", that he had a chip on his shoulder and that if any blanked owl knocked it off he "Would Who? Who in – are you anyhow?" Thus the belligerents fought their battle at long range with language, like many other pugilists. A rabbit, who in another month would throw off his brown vest and put on his white winter overcoat, went loping past, stopping occasionally to nip off a wintergreen leaf. These, and other sounds indicating various activities of wood folk, continued to divert attention while two hours passed.
The "Yap, Yap," of a red fox sounded down the brook. A few minutes later his voice was heard again, nearer; presently he came into view. He was wading in the shallow water of the brook, eyes intently fixed upon the water, following a school of minnows. Stepping high and cautiously, he, from time to time, suddenly jabbed his muzzle into the water and brought up a fish from two to three inches long, which he chewed and swallowed with seeming satisfaction. When he missed, which happened often, he repeated his impatient "Yap, Yap" and moved up stream where was another bunch of minnows.
This was the first time I had ever seen a fox fishing and I was intensely interested in his operations. About this time, I heard a commotion in the bushes behind me, and turned in time to see the horns and white tail of a deer over the tops of the bushes as he bounded along down the runway. I heard him for a full minute, still going strong down toward the lake.
Five minutes later Bige appeared, coming down the path gently demanding, "Why in time didn't you shoot that deer? I've been following him for an hour. Fresh tracks all the way. Heard him twice. He went right by here, kicked up the dirt at every jump. You won't get a better shot in ten years. What in tunket were you doing anyhow?"
"Who, me? Why-I-I was fishing."
"BUTTERMILK FALLS" is one of the show places in our neck of the woods. The guide books make mention of it, and the tourist and "one week boarder" see it first. Also, when one tires of fishing, of mountain climbing, of tramping, and is in need of some new form of diversion, there is always "somethin' doin' at the falls." In the presence of their majestic beauty, and in the roar of their falling, tumbling, foaming waters, deer seem to lose their natural timidity and often, in mid-day, show themselves in the open to drink of the waters at the foot of the falls and to drink in the beauty of the picture. In the course of my wanderings in the forests, I have often observed, in spots that are particularly wild or picturesque, or that have an extensive outlook, evidences that deer have stood there, perhaps stamping or pawing the ground for hours at a time, while they enjoyed the view. Such evidence points to the theory that wild deer not only have an eye for the beautiful in nature, but that they manifest good taste in their choice of a picture.
One day two black bears were seen feeding on the bank of the river just above the falls. A family of beavers have built a house about a hundred yards below the falls and have made several unsuccessful attempts to dam the rapids, in which operations about an acre of alder bushes have been cut and dragged into position, only to be carried down stream by the swift waters. This is the only family of beavers I ever met who are not good engineers.
There is also the typical tale of the "big trout-a perfect monster of a fish," that lives in the deep pool under the falls. Scores of people have "seen him;" every guide and every fisherman who has visited this region has tried to catch the "wise old moss-back." Several times he has been hooked, but the stories of lost leaders and broken tackle that have been told would fill a volume, and he still lives.
Also, the falls are not without their romance. Tradition, dating back to the Indian occupation, perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, tells of a beautiful Indian maiden who was wont to meet her lover at midnight when the moon was full, at a spot just above the falls. Coming down the river in her birch-bark canoe, the maiden would await the arrival of the young warrior, who was of another and a hostile tribe, living the other side of the mountain. When the moonlight shadow of the tall pine fell upon a particular spot on the big rock, the ardent lover arrived, guided through the dark and trackless forest by the roar of the falls, which could be heard beyond the mountain top.
Of course the chief, the girl's father, objected to the attentions of this enemy lover, as also did other and rival admirers of her own tribe.
On a mid-summer night the lovers parted, he to go on a mission to Montreal, which then involved a long, difficult and dangerous tramp through the wilderness. Both were pledged to meet again at the falls at midnight of the harvest-moon. As the shadow of the September moon fell upon the midnight mark on the big rock, the Indian maid arrived in her canoe, but the lover came not. Instead, appeared one of the rival warriors of her own tribe, who told of an ambush, of a poisoned arrow and of a dead lover.
The heart-broken maid then drifted out into midstream and with her canoe passed over the falls and was killed on the rocks below. Tradition goes on to relate how, at midnight of every harvest moon since that tragic event, the ghost of the beautiful Indian maiden appears in her birch bark canoe and sails over Buttermilk Falls, disappearing in the foaming waters at their foot.