Winter is already prowling along the margin of the prairies. 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 north-east winds, and fan against the rim of the southern horizon is autumn, throwing backward a good-bye glance as she takes the southward trail. It all sounds forbidding to wayfaring humans, but not so to the tiny ears of the little people of the prairies, to whom the warning note of winter comes as a majestic overture, heralding warm enwrapping snows, and Nature's wonderful provision of a thicker coat of fur that will turn the whistling winds from their fat little bodies, and leave them none the worse for zero weather.
The wild fowl are flocking in vast numbers on the sloughs, taking their last dip in these northern waters before the ice surfaces drive them to warmer latitudes. Fat little teal and plump mallards are fraternizing in the common interest of the good-bye week, which closes a long beautiful summer in the rare airs of the north-land. Far above the swarms of water-fowl circles a glorious company of graceful birds. The human eye can scarcely detect them, for distance has blurred their huge forms to but specks against the blue; but the clear piping of their wild whistle reaches the ear like the note of a flageolet. They are a wondrous company, these sand-hill cranes, that are taking leave of the prairies for the pampas, and their far, high voices 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, who 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 from the Red River to the Rockies is peopled with an industrious tribe of furred homesteaders, whose snug little houses, deftly fashioned of wattles, mud, and wild grasses, poke their numberless brown roofs above the water-line, which freezes every night in these late autumn weeks and thaws again at sun-up. But should a specially severe November frost bridge the slough with ice the long day through, the knowing little home builders will emerge in scores, and, wrapped in overcoats already growing thick and silky for winter protection, they will huddle like brown pom-poms on their thin coating of ice, on the sunny side of their houses, luxuriating in the warmth and comfort of a southern exposure.
Bordering the muskegs the silvery leaves of the wolf willow are already stiffening with the cold, rustling with a sweet staccato melody in response to every sweep of wind across the plains. The shy wild prairie hens start erect and alert at every whispering leaf, for the Hunter's Moon is swinging toward the western horizon, and to be wary is to be wise. But a wealth of wild rose seed berries are too alluringly scarlet and spicy to be left because of murmuring cotton-woods, 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.
Sunset on the plains, and the far wild 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, he, too, disdains the southward trail. His bleached and shaggy coat is now a uniform yellowish-grey, two inches in thickness—a royal wrap wherein to face the coming blizzards. As he howls up the edge of night, some distant brother answers, his voice rising in the north wind like the cry of a haunted soul. Soon the two vagabonds are padding up the trailless waste towards the 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 garment of dazzling white in anticipation of coming snows, for his instinct of self-preservation is unerring, and he suits his wardrobe to the season. His little brother, the weasel, has also learned this same precaution, for with the first flurry of snow he clothes himself as an ermine, and disports his robes of state with delightful indifference, that his silky lily-white, lemon and jet garment may someday border the court train of a queen. He is the much desired of traders and trappers, but with inborn coquetry he eludes the pursuer, leading him a merry dance for many a wintry moon. Then, just as the late March days make him bold with hunger, and he is almost within the grasp of human greed—presto! he changes, and assumes once more the self-protecting garb of the common north-west weasel.
Yet another little brother belongs to this wise society of precautionists. That is the jaunty jack-rabbit, who gladly lays aside his vesture of butter-nut brown when the trees discard their leaves. He, too, arranges with Dame Nature for an overcoat white as the frozen trails down which he gaily leaps across 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 keenest hunter, the greediest trapper, for he is a snow-ball rolled in snow, and he laughs and twitches his long ears gaily the frozen winter through. And there is small chance of making this merry fellow into a pot-pie so long as his Christmas coat enfolds him from his sensitive shell-tinted nose to his little powder puff of a tail.
A distant kinsman of his—the gopher—does not care to share his wintry escapades, however. This jolly little prairie comedian much prefers the warmth of his burrow. Consequently he does not bother about winter wardrobes. One suit of clothes will do him the long year round. But, although not fond of dress or fashion, he certainly loves the larder. For weeks he has tormented the toiling north-west farmer, running riot through the grain fields, stealing, thieving, plundering, from the precious stores of “Number 1, Hard,” until his provision for the winter months has salted down hoards in his household and laid layers of warm fat around his greedy little body. Soon we shall miss his small, beady, impudent eyes peering from behind some depleted stook, while he sits erect on his haunches, his tiny “hands” drooping innocently beneath his throat, his entire little person so like a picketing peg that he deceives even the old-timer. He has no fear of humans, for he has never been one of the hunted. In this particular he has no relatives in the prairie country, unless they are the noble little colony of beavers that build and plan and build again in the Qu'Appelle and other glorious valleys. The seven close seasons to come have insured progeny and playtime to the royal little animals that crest the arms of the great Dominion.
Leagues westward, where the plains bubble into the foot-hills, and these in turn rise into the Rockies, the cinnamon bear and his black brother are having a last nip at ripened berries, before taking up winter residence in their dens. The lynx is growing his snow-shoes of silvery fringe about his feet. His claws are embedded in feathery grey, and many the snow-shrouded crag and canyon that he will scale, that were it not for these same snowshoes he would never dare attempt.
But during these brief Indian summer days there is one imperial creature missing from amongst the peoples of the prairies, the shadowy buffalo trails are calling out pathetically for the vanished hoofs that etched their outlines. Far off the pungent smoke of the late prairie fires twists itself into scarfs of chiffon that the imagination peoples with an army with drifting grey plumes in their helmets. But never more before that sweeping prairie fire will thunder the royal herds. Only the circled stamping-stones, the wandering indigenous trails whisper like echoes of the lost kings of the level lands. The heart may long until it aches, the eye may watch until it blurs, but the empty horizon only proclaims a never-coming herd of buffalo.
The inevitable night is drawing very near, when through the twilight shall come the “honk” of a nearing band of sky-farers that will whir overhead on their hurried journey sunwards. For they leave the northland regretfully, these loyal battalions of grey geese and wavies, and the palid lantern of the Hunter's Moon is burning very low before they gather in their V-ing flight. They are the last to say good-bye—the very last to take the southward trail.