Meph, the Pet Skunk (American Woodland Tales) Read online

  When he opened them again he found that he was sniffing a pleasant wind that came up from the marsh. He rose excitedly and looked down the hill, for the wind bore the rich scent of his mother. She was walking home, her head low, her haunches high, and her tail lifted. Unlike the mother song sparrow she needed no all-clear signals before she went hunting, for she was endowed by nature with a great protection, and feared little or nothing.

  Meph tumbled through the hole in the stone wall and ran to meet her. He sank his nose into the black fur and smelled deeply of her wonderful odor. She herded him back to their den. She could smell Sycamore Will riding the tractor up and down the corn rows, and although she did not fear him for herself, she wanted her kit sheltered.

  Inside the gloomy walls, she played with the energetic kit, letting him pounce on her and roll her over, biting at him gently now and then to tease him, and chuttering with approval as he stamped his feet for her and lifted high his tail.

  Up to this point Meph had been an easy kit to raise. He had obeyed her warnings, stayed in the nest when she left, and had made little noise. Now, however, she sensed a change in him. He was ready for new things. His curiosity was growing and he was becoming discontented with the small space under the summer kitchen. He fussed and chortled more in the evenings. He played harder and often looked out the entrance toward the mountains and the stream.

  The mother also understood that much of Meph’s restlessness was due to her. Her milk was not enough for him. Making a living on the farm was difficult. The sterile washed soil did not harbor many nourishing insects or mice. The young barn owls were catching the mice near the house that had been her main source of food. She found herself hunting longer and longer, farther and farther away, yet, getting less and less to eat. This affected her supply of milk for Meph. He was too young to take hunting, too vulnerable to the hungry fox of the field, and the insatiable owlets. Yet she understood his needs and knew that she must take him out tonight.

  It was a hectic evening for the mother skunk, but a glorious one for Meph. Without benefit of words, he knew his mother was permitting him to follow her this night. He bounced happily behind her to the hole in the wall. He lifted his regal tail and clambered out into the moonlit yard. He sensed his mother’s uneasiness as she moved cautiously into the shadow of the house. Meph knew he was to hunt. He looked around, listened, then spurted out into the moonlight after a May beetle. It had blundered into a blade of grass. It paused a moment then climbed slowly up the blade, its yellow wings sticking out from under the chestnut brown covers. Meph was about to nose it when his mother pounced on him and herded him back into the shadow of the farmhouse. Meph followed at her heels.

  At the far corner of the summer kitchen they left the dark shadow of the Lites’ home and slipped through the tall grass, downhill to the swamp. Frequently Meph’s mother turned on him, bit him, and growled. He immediately turned away from the dark trails that led off through the swamp and decided not to explore. The mother knew her kit was not schooled in discipline, and what he must know to protect himself must be learned in a hurry. At times she seemed to bite and snarl at him for no reason at all, but by the time they reached the Yellow Breeches Creek, Meph was not starting off alone on the trails he found.

  The Yellow Breeches rolled quietly within its banks, no longer the swelling stream that had driven them from their home. Many years ago it had flowed constantly all year. Bass had lived in its clear pools. However, as the farmers cut and grazed their woodlots, the trees could no longer hold back the soil, and silt filled the pools. As the fields were exposed by poor farming, the rains carried the topsoil into the stream, and the bright water turned muddy. As the bass died off, so passed the sleek and beautiful minks. The otter disappeared and the deer moved to the brushlands of the mountains. All the wild animals were affected by the farmers who tilled the soil without thought or care.

  The lonely night heron stalked the shallows spearing the sluggish suckers, the fish of unhealthy waters.

  Meph trotted out to the stream bank, and the night heron lifted its great wings and flew up the creek. He watched it disappear, then waddled down to the water with his mother.

  She pulled snails from the muddy stream, crunched them, and gave them to Meph.

  The sensation of solid food surprised Meph. It did not slip down his throat like milk, but stuck against his tongue and teeth. He churned it around and around in his mouth, then suddenly the food lodged far back on his tongue, slipped, and was gone. He took another snail from his mother and chewed at it as she did. Sweet juices pleased him; he romped forward for more.

  Meph ate snails and beetle larvae until he was comfortable, then turned to other things. With the wet point of his nose pressed close to the ground, he wandered up the stream bed. He blundered into an old log that smelled of ants and centipedes. His mother called to him. Meph was young, and obedience was hard to learn. He pushed under the twisted log and squeezed out on the other side. He stopped and peered under the log to see if his mother was following. Above him sounded the click of claws. Meph looked up to see his mother on top of the log. He squeaked and ran. He ran as fast as his short legs would carry him, bright-eyed and excited by the knowledge that any instant his mother would catch him. When she was almost upon him, he turned to the left and bumped head first into the bank. Knowing he was cornered, he lifted his tail and turned his head to see where his haunches were. With his tail in firing position he felt confident and secure. He contracted the muscles that controlled his scent anal glands. He waited for the wonderful odor to come from his body. Nothing happened. The night air still smelled of the muddy stream bottom and rotting leaves. There was a hammering thud and Meph was looking into the angry eyes of his mother. She was pounding the ground with her front feet. With a deft swat she struck Meph and he tumbled over against the bank. Scolding, gabbling, and snapping she drove him back to the stream. Meph sat quietly on the bank. From time to time his mother snapped at him as if to refresh his memory.

  The vigilant mother scarcely let Meph move for the next hour, and Meph became tired and bored. First he looked at his long black nails as he worked them in and out of the cracks in the mud, then he watched his tail as he swished it from side to side. Finally his mother looked at him and walked up the stream bank. Meph obediently arose and padded behind her to the next bed of snails. She stopped at the bend in the creek. Meph joined her in her search.

  Behind him the bushes stirred. He squinted into the dark. Three young raccoons romped out of the underbrush and rolled down the bank. They nipped and charged one another. Meph started to run before the strangers, then looked to his mother for the signal to move. She was busily digging in the mud, and gave him no sign. He eyed the strangers, stamped his feet, then swung his haunches to line them up with his gaze. The young raccoons heard the stomping but were almost upon him before they saw the black and white animal. They stopped, sniffed the air, and whistled softly to him. They lined up in a weaving, sniffing front. Meph moved slowly toward them, half backing, half side stepping. When he was very close a frisky raccoon reared, sniffed, then burst away from his brother and sister. He danced around Meph nipping his tail, reaching with his agile front paws for him.

  Meph pivoted in a small circle, tail and eye following the cavorting coon kit. He bubbled his skunk cry, and the raccoon stopped, threw his ears forward, and looked at him. Meph cried again. The young coon interpreted the signal and bounced in to play. The other youngsters cavorted after him.

  A surge of excitement went through Meph, and he jumped up, stamped, and nipped at his playmates. Here were young things as full of life and energy as he. He gabbled, closed his eyes, and bumped the raccoons as they rolled and tumbled around him. The lonely Meph was delighted with these frolicking friends. As his excitement mounted, so rose his tail. The coons pulled it down with their clutching paws. Meph stamped the ground for them and they stopped and listened. When the play became too rough he shifted to spraying stance. The raccoons drew back
and watched. Nothing happened and they ran forward and knocked him down.

  Suddenly there was a stern low whistle and a sizeable animal marked like the three kits, came striding through the underbrush. The great raccoon was excited; she nosed and shoved the young ones up the bank. She scolded them as she took them off. They obeyed and romped up the bank into the fringe of woods. She herded them far away from Meph, and he could hear her still erraking to them as they moved off along a cottontail trail.

  Meph stood alone in a misty patch of moonlight. Slowly his fine tail drooped and a feeling of loneliness came over him. He had understood the signal of the old raccoon. She was telling her young not to play with Meph. It had been a cry of warning and danger. Meph called to them, but they did not answer. He turned and walked slowly down to the water where his mother was hunting. He sank his nose into her warm fur and cried.

  THE PIT

  SYCAMORE WILL LOOKED more closely at his book as his father pushed aside the strongbox with the farm savings and prepared to go to bed.

  “Better come on up, son,” he said, as he walked across the kitchen to the stairs.

  “I’ll be right along,” Sycamore mumbled. “Gotta finish a little bit more.” Molly put aside her darning and followed her husband to the back stairs.

  “Put out the lights when you come up, Sycamore,” she said and started up the steps. Sycamore counted their footsteps as they went up:

  “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” he said to himself as they reached the top of the steps. He sat still for several minutes, running his fingers through his yellow hair, and listening to the noises of the old house. The kitchen floor began to snap and crack, the walls seemed to moan, and from the living room came the click of a settling beam.

  Sycamore rose and went out the back door with the flashlight. He slipped quietly down the cellar steps and into the musty vegetable bin. He crossed the damp earthen floor and picked up the iron bar. Gently, he pried at the crusty window that opened under the summer kitchen. It gave slowly at first, then suddenly with a bang and a cloud of dust it wrenched free. He was looking at the cobwebs and dusty beams under the kitchen. He was worried about all the noise he had made. The baby skunk would be frightened and run out the hole in the wall. He waited a moment, then wormed his way quietly through the window and over the ground on his stomach. When his feet had cleared the window ledge, he clicked on the dim flashlight and looked around the low enclosure.

  Sycamore flinched. Not more than three feet from his face he saw the glare of two eyes! He recovered and reached; then withdrew his arm slowly, for this creature was not small and fuzzy. A sharp-pointed face filled in around the eyes. A narrow white line ran down the forehead. Falling over the ears were the long shimmering hairs of an arched tail. And also facing him were the strong compact haunches of Meph’s mother. Gradually her anus whitened and widened and the papillae were exposed. Sycamore had never seen a skunk spray, but he knew perfectly well what was happening. Never had anyone had a better chance to see it happen. But this was one lesson he didn’t want to finish. He wiggled back, and back, keeping an eye on the charged white spot.

  “Must move slow, real slow,” he thought. “Wild animals don’t like quick movements. Easy does it, Syc.” His feet found their way through the window, thrashed around in the air a minute as they sought the wooden box he had used as a step. They contacted it, and then deftly he squeezed his shoulders together and moved his head back through the window. “Easy, easy; now close the window gently, gently, gently Sycamore.” He breathed deeply as he pushed the window shut and flicked out the flashlight. For several moments he sat on the box, breathing heavily.

  “Whew,” he said finally, “That was close!”

  Sycamore turned out the light in the kitchen and went up to his bedroom. For a long time he lay awake, planning another way to get the baby skunk. Maybe when its mother went hunting. Maybe he could set up a box trap for him. He would work out something, for he wanted the little fellow desperately.

  Late the next afternoon he met Sam Toy at the iron bridge. Sam as usual was waiting for him forty-feet above the road, sitting on the iron scaffolding. Sycamore took a running start about fifteen feet from the bridge and ran up the slanting support with feet and hands. As nonchalant as he was able he strode the narrow catwalk, spitting into the creek some sixty feet below as he approached Sam. He sat down beside him, and they both looked into the stream.

  Sam was a year older than Sycamore, equally lean, but according to Sycamore far more world-minded. He had short cropped hair, a nose that had grown ahead of the rest of his face, and dark stumps along his chin and upper lip that marked the third cutting of his beard. This alone gave Sam the distinction of being a man of the world. One leg of his overalls he wore folded carefully in his work shoe. A faded black-and red-checkered shirt completed his outfit. He didn’t look up as Sycamore Will sat down, but kept his eye on a turtle far below, that was thrashing its legs in the air as it reached for a footing on a round log.

  When it finally pulled itself into the sun he said:

  “It’s almost haying time at our place.”

  “Same here,” replied his friend.

  “Dismal,” said Sam.

  “Worse,” added Sycamore.

  “I know how to get out of it,” Sam said testily. Sycamore turned quickly and looked at him.

  “How?”

  “It’s a matter of about thirty dollars.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, a friend of mine who has a car is driving to Arizona. He leaves next week, and we can go along if we get thirty dollars together.”

  “Arizona,” whispered Sycamore. “Gee, Arizona!”

  “Do you think you can get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “Thirty dollars.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Yes, you can. Think it over. If you really want to go you get thirty dollars.”

  The two boys sat silently for a moment. Sycamore wanted to tell Sam about the baby skunk, but it seemed pale compared to a trip to Arizona. Besides, Sam disapproved of attachment to animals. He called it a show of the primitive man in you, or something of the sort. He didn’t believe in any kind of sentiment, said it bogged a man down and made him stay in one place. Sycamore thought about attacking Sam from a different angle. Maybe he would tell him he wanted to trap a skunk and get rid of it. If he put it that way, he might get some help. He was about to speak when Sam said:

  “It isn’t more than a month’s egg money.”

  “What isn’t?” asked Sycamore.

  “Thirty dollars. What do you think?”

  “Oh.”

  Sam swung his leg over the iron rail and started down one of the crisscross uprights. Sycamore followed him. They didn’t stop at the bridge, for it was a sworn law between them never to put a foot on the roadbed. Instead, they climbed down to the trusses beneath the bridge and swung hand over hand on them for a few yards, then dropped onto the grassy bank.

  “We gotta get out of this place, Sycamore,” Sam said as they dug up their buried coffee and tin bucket and started a small fire. “Nothing ever happens around here, ’cept work. Why, man, we’ll be peasants if we stay here. Peasants working from dawn to dusk, getting nothing but sunburn and busted backs.

  “Why the most exciting thing that happens is a chicken laying an egg. Sycamore, we’ve gotta leave before life passes us up. Think what we’re missing, man; roundups, rangers in the mountains, cross-country trains, St. Bernards in the snow, gun battles in the desert—everything!”

  Sycamore stirred the coffee in the bucket. It had turned an opaque brown. He lifted it from the fire, took a sip, and passed it to Sam. Sam flinched at the taste, but passed it off with:

  “I shudder at the very thought of what’s going on without us. For a mere thirty bucks we could be drinking this brew in Arizona; Indians up in those hills, rattlesnakes in the brush.”

  “Thirty dollars is an awful lot of money, Sam,” Sycamore Will finally said. “W
hy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thirty-dollar bill.”

  “Come to think of it, neither have I. But thirty one-dollar bills would do just as well.”

  “Gee, I could work all summer and not earn that much.”

  “That’s just the point. We can’t earn it, so we’ve got to steal it. That’s the best way I know of to get money in a hurry. Well, we’ve got a week to get it. Think about it.” Sam rose and jumped up to the bridge trusses. He slung his legs over his head and pulled himself up on the bridge railing.

  “Guess I better get back, my old man wants me to clean out the barn. Manure,” he said and sprang up the crossbars to the top of the bridge. Sycamore Will watched him walk steadily along the top rail and back down the far side.

  “Steal it,” Sycamore said under his breath as he watched Sam leap to the ground and start home. “Gee, he sure is a tough guy.”

  Sycamore was disturbed by the idea, however, and he walked home slowly, kicking the stones with the toe of his shoe. He saw himself slipping into a bank and taking a handful of bills when no one was watching. Bank bills really didn’t belong to anyone in particular and therefore seemed easier for Sycamore to imagine himself taking. Walking back across the floor of the bank and out the door was terribly exciting. He wasn’t scared. He was calm and collected, even stopped a minute to light a cigar and blow smoke back over his shoulder. Then he strode out. The next thing he knew he and Sam were in Arizona sitting around a fire in the hills. He took out a poster with his picture on it. It read: “Wanted Sycamore Will. Bank Robber.”