It was, of course, the Hyas Chee Chahko who remarked upon our scarcity of song birds, to which I replied with some asperity that nature never endowed any country in the world with every gift. She had given to us so much grandeur of beauty, such gentliness of climate, that surely the poor old East deserved at least something that had not been lavished on us. So nature gave her song birds to even matters a little.
“In the spring it must be dismal not to have those battalions of songsters wing up from the South,” she remarked.
“Not half as dismal as having to endure their wingings away to the south in autumn,” I answered. “We are at least spared that. We have no Ontario snows or Manitoba blizzards to frighten away what little friends we have. There are few of our birds that leave us. The good old friendly crow, and the graceful sea gull never tire of us.”
“There was a blizzard raging as I came through,” she volunteered. “Saskatchewan was in the throes of it, the first of the season, and it was good to see the green lawns and ivy and even a vagrant rose or two when I arrived here.”
The Hyas Chee Chahko was right. Winter is already prowling along the edge of the prairie country. The impress of its moccasined feet glitters in hoar frost about the bluffs and coulees. The keen stinging whirr of its wings comes driving up the level lands, beating the still cold atmosphere into a fury of northeast winds. Autumn has long since taken the southward trail; one has even forgotten the loveliness of her backward glance of Indian summer which she smilingly flung over the prairies before she faded across the rim of the southern horizon. The unwelcome forbidding season has come to wayfaring humans, but the tiny ears of the little people of the prairies love the warning note of winter which comes to them as a majestic overture heralding warm enwrapping snows and Nature's marvellous provision of a thicker coat of fur or feathers that will turn the whistling winds from their fat little bodies and leave them none the worse for zero weather.
The wild fowl that recently flocked in vast numbers to the sloughs of Saskatchewan have taken their last dip in northern waters before the ice surfaces drove them to warmer latitudes. Fat little teal and plump mallards fraternized in the common interest of the good-bye weeks which closed a long beautiful summer in the clear rare airs of the northland. Far above the swarms of waterfowl circled many a company of graceful birds at such an altitude that the human eye could scarcely discern them. Distance had blurred their huge forms until they were but specks against the blue, but the clear piping of their wild whistle always reaches the ear like the notes of a flageolet. A wondrous company these sandhill cranes taking leave of the prairies for the pampas, and their far high voices always hold a hint of farewell as they circle slowly, slowly southward. But down in the sloughs are some busy brown-coated lovers of the north that have no idea of migrating from their homes in the acrid alkali waters. For weeks the wise little muskrats have labored like beavers preparing for the onslaught of winter. The result is that every slough is peopled with an industrious tribe of furred homesteaders, whose snug little houses, built of wattles, mud and wild grasses, poke their numberless brown domes above the waterline, which the first crisp nights of coming winter have already frozen, with no hope of a thaw at sun up. But no matter who takes the southward trail in November the Saskatchewan sun does not make one of the number. He shines away just as gloriously as if it were July, and in his faint hint of warmth the little home-building muskrats emerge in scores, and wrapped in overcoats already grown thick and silky for winter protection they will huddle like brown pompoms at the southern door of their domicile, luxuriating in the glare of pale yellow sunlight.
Bordering the muskegs the wolf willow still retains a few of its silvery leaves that, stiffened with the cold, rustle in a sweet staccato melody in response to every wind that sweeps across the plains. The shy wild prairie hens start erect and alert at every whispering twig and branch, for guns have been patroling the trails for weeks, and to be wary is to be wise. But a wealth of wild rose seeds are too temptingly crimson and spicy to be abandoned because of murmuring cottonwoods, poplars and wolf willows. So the hunted one with sharpening wits and timid heart still lingers amongst the rose berries fattening and profiting on this memory of a long ago dead June blossom, that even in these days of snow and ice, offers some of its deathless beauty to the wild human-hunted creatures that made their nests and brought out their broods beneath its fragrant flowers so many moons ago.
It is sunset on the plains, and the far clear bark of a coyote heralds in the night. He is prowling up the rim of a distant coulee, hunger driven to the carcase of some weakling steer his fangs have not yet finished. Like the muskrat and the prairie hen he too disdains the southward trail, the level lands of the north are his stamping ground the year through, and albeit he starves in winter his love for the snow wastes is loyal. His coat which was bleached and shaggy in the summer months is now a uniform yellowish grey tipped down the back with glossy black three inches in thickness—a royal wrap wherein to face the inevitable blizzards. As he howls up the edge of night some distant brother replies, his voice rising on the northwind like the cry of a haunted soul. Soon the two vagabonds are padding up the trailless waste towards their carrion, their eyes green-fired and lustful, their fangs foaming, their red tongues dripping. In the poplar bluffs the great horned owl hoots his greeting as they pass. He has changed his hot-weather suit of russet feathers for a suit of dazzling whiteness, in anticipation of a long winter of endless snows, for his instinct of self preservation is unerring, and he always suits his wardrobe to the season. His little brother of the wilds—the weasel—has also acquired this same cunning, for with the first hint of snow he clothes himself as an ermine, and disports his robes of state with delightful indifference to the fact that should a nearing gun end his days his silky lily white saffron and ebony garment may some day border the court train of a queen. He is the much desired prey of traders and trappers, but he is a born strategist, and for many seasons may elude the pursuer, leading him a merry dance under many a wintry moon. Then just as the late days of March render him bold with hunger and he is almost within the grasp of human greed, almost a victim to the littleness of human vanity—Presto! he changes his overcoat, and with the melting of the snows he assumes once more the valueless, but blessed self-protecting russet garb of the common northwest weasel.
Yet another little brother belongs to this wise society of precautionists. He is the jaunty jack rabbit, who lays aside his vesture of butternut brown the moment the trees discard their leaves. He is a great pet of Dame Nature's, and although he too is hunted by man and wolf alike, he knows few cares and takes small heed of caution. What need to be wary when one is so fleet of foot? He does not much believe in presence of mind, but is a strong adherent of the absence of body sect. He can put distance between himself and a gun faster than the hunter can take aim, and long ago his fairy godmother endowed him with two complete suits of clothes to change with the changing seasons. Even the eye of an expert can not distinguish his russet summer coat from the russet trails, the russet of short prairie grass, the russet scrub oaks, the russet green sage brush, but in November he dons a coat of exquisite whiteness, in which he gaily frisks over untold miles. His disguise is so unique that it fails to be a disguise at all, and in this very failure is a success. Thus is our friend the jack rabbit a bit of a paradox. But nevertheless he outwits the wolf, he eludes the keenest shot, he circumvents the greediest hunter, for he is a snowball rolled in snow, and he laughs and gambols and twitches his long ears tauntingly at his enemies the winter through, and there is small chance of making this merry fellow into a potpie as long as his Christmas coat enfolds him from his sensitive shell-tinted nose to his dainty powder puff of a tail.
A distant kinsman of his—the gopher—does not care to share his wintry escapades, however, though the family trail is strong within him, as he also refuses to take the southward trail. He is a jolly little fellow, the comedian in the vast company of prairie players, and as he rarely appears in tragic roles, one suit of clothes does him the entire year round. But although not fond of dress or fashion, he certainly loves the larder, and for weeks and weeks together he torments the toiling northwest farmer, running riot through his grain fields, stealing, thieving, plundering from the cherished stores of “No. 1 hard,” until his thrift has salted down hoards of provisions in his burrow and laid layers of warm fat about his greedy little body. Generations have failed to instill into his saucy little head or heart even the semblance of a conscience. He known not even fear, for he has never been one of the hunted ones either for flesh or fur. In this particular he has no relatives in all the prairie country unless indeed they are the thrice fortunate beaver enjoying so lengthy a close season.
Leagues westward, where the plains bubble into the foothills, and those in turn rise into the Rockies, the cinnamon bear and his black brother and grizzly cousin have taken their last nip at the late ripening berries, and are already domiciled in their winter dens. The lynx has grown his snowshoes of heavy silvery fringe about his feet, his claws are gloved in feathery grey and many the snow-piled crag and canyon he will scale this winter that were it not for those same snowshoes he could not dare attempt. He and the bear family could never be induced to leave their haunts in the northern fastnesses—southern suns hold for them no allurment, southern climes no fascination. A short time ago they listened to the overhead “honk” of a great band of skyfarers, who urged them in vain to join the migrating flocks or herds; but the four-footed furbearers deafened their ears to the call. The prairies and the foothills were their birthright the year through and they would not abandon this vast heritage for any land of tropical suns. Soon the whirr of wings overhead ceased, the last flock had dipped over the southern horizon, but the sloughs were frozen even before they left, for they say good-bye to the northland regretfully. These loyal bands of grey geese and wavies, and the hunter's moon is burning very low before they gather in their V-ing flight. They are always the last to say farewell, the very last to take the southward trail.
But there is one imperial creature that is ever missing from amongst the people of the prairie, and shadowy half obliterated trails are calling out pathetically for the vanished hoofs that etched their outlines. Far off the smoke of the prairie fires twist themselves into scarfs like the clouds that drift above the Vancouver Lions, but never again before that sweeping flame will thunder the royal herds of buffalo. Only the circled stamping stones, the wandering half-effaced trails whisper like echoes of the lost kings of the level lands. Herds of gentle antelope beat with their delicate feet up the very highways where fierce bulls fought, and horned, and died in their struggles for leadership of the countless thousands of bison that roamed unmolested from the Assiniboine to the foothills. The heart may long until it aches for the old-time lords of the plains, the ear may strain until it throbs for the beat of a myriad galloping hoofs, the eye may watch until it blurs for the masses of tossing horns and swinging shoulders, but the horizon is empty and the stillness of the snow enshrouded prairie longs uselessly for the never-coming herd of buffalo.