Swagdagger Crosses a Field
I
THERE is something in the nature of most men, arising on certain uneasy occasions, which has a basis so universal that everywhere it commands the sympathetic understanding of reasonable folk — an attitude of which the commonest vocal expression is ‘Why do you want to interfere with me? I don’t want to interfere with you! But if you’re looking for trouble you’ll —— well find it!’ (The usual intensifying word, here omitted for the sake of those ideas of civilized culture which Mr. Ovey self-righteously upholds, is entirely apt in the case of Swagdagger.) And as with men, so with animals who live the fife, wild and free and pitiless, that men have quitted.
This attitude in the wild is liable to instant reverse; the trouble seeker of one moment may be the troubled of the next. The rights and wrongs — many of them as old as fife itself — of Swagdagger happily crossing a field on a certain morning in early June cannot be discussed in this story, which is able only to hold an account of all the trouble which began when Mr. Ovey, of London, looked over a bank.
His large round head, rising out of a starched collar, moved across the gap in the western bank of the field below Windwhistle Cross, and vanished; but it came back immediately — pomaded hair, waxed moustache, pince-nez rimless glasses, new shiny teeth. Mr. Ovey, a short stout little man halfway through fife, stood on his toes and peered over, preparing an indignant glance. Someone must be in the farther field! There the evidence was — a long strip of paper, blowing across the grass! Mr. Ovey pushed himself higher with his toes, and looked round to see who had dropped the paper. It had not been there a moment before, when he had been in the field. But, seeing no one, he got down from his uncomfortable position, and brushed the earth from his finger tips.
Mr. Ovey, standing in the sunken lane, looked at the gap again, and thought how unprotected his property was. The sooner that notice board was up, the better! The paint ought to be dry enough; it could go up to-day. He must see that the gap in the bank — made by bullocks, so the farmer had said — was filled with thorn branches pegged down. Anyone could get over there! A padlock for the five-barred gate, and a strand or two of barbed wire twisted round the top bar. And, his head full of thoughts of boards and thorns and wire and paper, Mr. Ovey got into his car and drove down the hill to the village in the valley below.
Recently Mr. Ovey, a business man on holiday from London (‘Ovey’s Liver Salts — Get That Athlete’s Zest for a Farthing a Day’), had bought three fields in a district adjoining Exmoor in North Devon, in the belief that a few years would see more than double his money back in building sites, as he told his wife. Not that he would want to live there himself! Mr. Ovey thought the country a dull place to live in, where there was nothing to see except views like picture postcards, and where nothing ever happened.
Three red lanes, metaled with ironstone, — one of them already bearing much motor traffic in summer, — met at the southwestern corner of the field, near the gate. Just above this gate was a small spinney of beech trees called Windwhistle Cross. The motor road divided the spinney, and led on over the down to Ilfracombe. It was toward these trees that Mr. Ovey had looked when he passed the gap in the bank. Mr. Ovey had always lived in London, and he considered himself both shrewd and observant; but, had the eyes of Mr. Ovey been of wider use to him, he would have noticed that the long white strip, rippling as paper in wind, was moving in a direction contrary to that in which the wind was blowing.
Less than half a minute after the departure of Mr. Ovey, the white rippling object had reached the middle of the field. It was moving on a track it had run along many times before, a track belonging to itself. Indeed, it owned the entire field, with every other field it ran in. Its sense of ownership was similar to that of Mr. Ovey, but more elemental; its angry defiance of any intrusion was coupled with a raging desire to break with teeth the neck of its enemy. Nearly everything was its enemy, and nearly everything ran from it; for it was Swagdagger the stoat. Swagdagger lived a life harder and more eventful than any other stoat in the West Country, for he had been born without color, except for his eyes, which were pink, and the tip of his tail, which was black. Swagdagger’s hairy coat, covering a long and sinuous body, was white as the snow which so seldom fell in the fields. Nearly everything saw Swagdagger as he ran prow ling, low and swift and sniffing the air, over green pasture and brown ploughland, and through the thorns and brambles growing on the banks dividing the fields.
Swagdagger was hurrying, but he was not hunting. Alany times a day he ran with eagerness across his fields into Windwhistle Cross, to play with the five stoats who lived under a wood stack at the foot of a beech tree. Such rough-and-tumble games they played together — Swagdagger, his mate, and their cubs.
He had reached the middle of the field when a dark brown bird, with a wing span of more than four feet, wheeled in the sky a quarter of a mile away, and slanted down over the wind-sheared tree tops of the spinney. Swngdaggcr saw it coming, and ran faster. It was a buzzard hawk, whose wailing cry often came down from the sky. It fed on rabbits, moles, and snakes, which it dropped on from above and clutched in its yellow feet, piercing with black talons, and tearing with its hooked beak. The hawk was stronger and much heavier than the stoat, who saw its eyes and beak and hanging legs, under the line of its outspread wings, grow larger and larger as it glided upon him. Swagdagger stopped, his forepaws on the ground, his head and neck raised and pointing at the buzzard. He crouched until it lifted great wings to drop on him, and then he stood on his hind legs. The buzzard, who had meant to grip him across the back, saw a small white flattened circle, set with whiskers, that broke across with sharp clicking teeth.
The stoat stood like a lean mushroom stalk; the hawk seemed to bounce off its angry pointed nose. It flapped its broad wings, to keep itself safely above the furious pale eyes. It flapped heavily over the stoat toward the spinney, but rippling white movement lured it back again. It turned and swept down on the stoat, spreading yellow toes for the attack. The white ripple stopped, becoming fixed and upright under the snatch of talons. Again the buzzard quailed before the snapping teeth, and, beating into the air, sent a wailing cry down the wind. Whee-ee-i-oo!
Another bird, black from bristled beak to toe, that was perching on the highest bough of an elderberry tree, stunted and lichen-crusted, at the southwestern point of the spinney, heard the cry, and started out of its reverie — for it was contemplating the old nest from which it had driven the last of its grown winglings that morning. Immediately it stretched its head higher. Every black feather tightened when it saw the buzzard. Its craw swelled, its tail dipped, its beak opened, and Scarl! Scarl! Scarl! it called, harshly and rapidly.
Another carrion crow heard the call, and left the.’ broken carcass it had been eating — rabbit in snare set by laborer — and flew toward the elderberry. The crows built their nest in one or other of the trees of Windwhistle Cross every year; they owned the spinney, and the fields around it, and whenever they saw a winged or a four-legged intruder they drove it away from their property.
Krok! Krok! — Hawk! Hawk! said the first crow, flying up to meet her mate. Together they flew, silently, just above the green slope of the windsheared tree tops. They appeared suddenly over the spinney, seeing the field below. Krok! Krok! said the crow again, and flew faster toward the buzzard, meaning to peck out its feathers — a thing which the crows tried to do whenever they flew near a buzzard, not liking its face.
Before its beak had closed again, the male crow saw the stoat. The crow’s name was Scarl. Scarl had seen Swagdagger many times before. Krarr! Krarr! cried Scarl and his mate together, turning across the wind, and slanting over the red lane and the bramble-grown bank.
Swagdagger was not far from Windwhistle Cross when the crows dived at him. He recognized the voice of Scarl, and ground his teeth. With open beak Scarl dived, but a yard from the ground the crow flattened his wings and with a jeering Krarrl passed over him. Scarl alighted two yards behind Swagdagger, while his mate flapped above and in front of him. The stoat stood up to meet the peck of the crow, and Scarl, hopping quickly over the grass from behind, nipped the black tip of his tail.
In this way they teased Swagdagger for more than a minute, while he grew more and more angry. Every time he attempted to run forward he was poked and jabbed from behind by one or another of the crows, and at last he was not very far from the bank whence he had started.
Meanwhile the buzzard was soaring higher, watching the shifting white streak. It soared two fields away, stared at by a bird perched on a thorn growing out of the bank near a gate. This bird was the size of a crow, but more huddled-looking; and it had a whity-gray face of bare skin. The buzzard saw it looking up, and wailed for its mate again. The gray-faced bird launched itself off the thorn, and with leisured beat of wings climbed into the air to look around. It was a sentinel rook, and the buzzard was scared of rooks, for often they mobbed him.
It flew under the hawk, and cried Caal Caa-r! Hearing the summons, the rooks looked up from the earth where they were digging potatoes. Buzzard never harmed, and potatoes were good. They went on digging again, knowing that old sentinel could easily drive buzzard away.
Now Scarl the carrion crow saw the rook flying under the buzzard, and began to think. First one eye was cocked at them, then the other — for a crow cannot reason until he has taken a double squint. His beak lifted higher, his craw swelled, he dipped, and Krokkrok-krok-krokl he cried. The stoat bounded upon him, but the crow, still looking at the sky, hopped over his head, alighted behind him, and gave four more croaks. Ca-ar! answered the sentinel rook, leaving the buzzard, and flying over the field to find out why crow had called him. He saw, turned, and flew back quickly, in silence.
Usually rooks flew wide of crows, whom they distrusted, for crows had been known to chase the little red mousehawks, or kestrels, over their rookery in spring, and, in the general uproar that greeted the hawk, to sneak into the trees and suck rooks’ eggs. But against Swagdagger every bird’s beak and wing was raised. Krok-krokkrok-krok! cried the rook, wheeling over the edge of the potato field, and calling them in a voice like a crow’s. This time every rook flew up. The potato diggers (Mr. Ovey’s potatoes) glided and swooped down to the grass of the three-acre field as soon as they saw the white ripple. They filled the air with cawing and the sound of wings. They alighted on the grass, making around the stoat a rough excited circle, which broke wherever Swagdagger ran in his grinding rage.
Each rook urged his neighbor to hop forward and dab him one on the head. Each rook was determined not to be the one to dab first. Their wide and simple eyes, filled with scared thoughts, looked from stoat to crow, from crow to each other. Scarl and his mate hopped about in the ring, feeling safe with so many beaks near them, and enjoying the game of peck and jump. And all the while they were playing the crows were watching their chance to peck out Swagdagger’s eyes.
Sometimes nervous rooks would fly up with squawks of alarm, but the croaks of the bolder crows were reassuring, and they alighted in the circle again. Jackdaws passing over the spinney dropped among them, like flakes of burnt paper out of the blue sky, and croaked with deep voices, for they too belonged to the powerful family of the crows, and shared ownership of all the fields and woods. They poked their gray polls and hard azure eyes between the disheveled shoulders of the rooks, and cursed Swagdagger, who in hot rage was giving off a most penetrating stench, which in itself was almost enough to keep them at a distance. Then came four magpies, sloping over the field, their wings flickering black and white as they made slow way against the wind. They scolded loudly when they saw Swagdagger. After them came a pair of missel thrushes, who flew down boldly, the smallest birds present, and screamed in the face of Swagdagger as he stood, with swishing tail, with bared teeth, with blazing eyes, in a green space enclosed by the black and shifting mass. Suddenly every bird looked up into the air, and remained motionless, as though frozen.
Three miles westward, on his pitch two thousand feet above the sea, Chakchek the Backbreaker, the peregrine falcon, had seen the commotion of wings in the field, and a white speck in the centre. He owned the air of the world; even the eagle shifted under his stoop. Across the sky on level pinions he had glided, cutting round into the wind above Windwhistle Cross. He saw upheld beaks and eyes watching him anxiously. Crows and a stoat! He turned, and swept away.
II
The sentinel rook, sire of many birds of the rookery, in the village below, an old bird whose life was set in duty to others, watched the Backbreaker an eye-blink longer than the other rooks watched. He forgot Swagdagger as he stared at the pointed wings, which often he had heard hissing in the dreaded stoop. Then a whiteness flashed, and the old rook was on his back, his feathers were flying, his legs were kicking. He tried to screech a warning, but as his beak opened he shuddered; and Swagdagger, red on teeth and whiskers, ran at the next rook. The grass was flattened by the draught of beating wings.
Cra! cried Scarl, who had flown a yard, but returned again. Cra! as he hopped to the stricken rook, and pecked out its eyes.
As soon as the rooks and daws had flown up, Swagdagger started to run toward the spinney, carrying his head high. He had gone one third of the way along his track when the rooks, flying at him with open beaks, but swerving a safe distance off, checked him again. Other birds came to the field — tomtits and wagtails, sparrows, finches, and stonechats. They perched on the brambles of the banks, each one adding his tick or squall or stitter to the general outcry. Some of them had lost mates or fledglings when last they had seen the white horror.
Kron-n-n-n-n-n-n-k!
The sound, prolonged and deep, was audible through the screeching and cawing. It came from the spinney, the sound as of the trunk of a strong and living beech tree beginning to split in frost. Swagdagger suddenly stopped, sniffing the air. Only one thing had such an acrid smell, and whenever he encountered it Swagdagger got out of daylight into the nearest rabbit hole.
The owner of the deep and penetrating voice had flown inland when he had seen Chakchek the Backbreaker slip off his pitch; for sometimes he robbed the falcon of what he had struck down. He alighted on a branch at the top of a tree, which bowed to his weight. Scar! the crow saw him, — he was perching on Scarfs own lookout branch, which commanded nearly all the ground around the spinney, — but Scarl said nothing. For the newcomer was Kronk, King of the Crows, the powerful and aged owner of seven miles of coast — from Pencil Rock to the Morte Stone, where the realm of his great-grandson, the Gaping Raven, began — and of thousands of acres of forest, heath, field, spinney, and down. Kron-n-n-k!
The raven, looking blacker than any crow, he was so big, jumped off the lookout branch, and climbed almost vertically into the air. When about twenty feet above the tree tops he rolled on one wing, dropped a yard, and rolled level again. Then, his playful movement over, he pointed his great black beak at the stoat, and glided down to kill him.
But Swagdagger did not wait while Kronk was growing bigger in his downward glide. He turned, and galloped back along the track he had started to follow more than ten minutes before. Whee-oo! cried the buzzard from the sky, soaring on still, cleaver-shaped wings, as he watched Swagdagger fleeing before more than fifty clamorous birds, almost to be overtaken by the fast raven.
Swagdagger rippled up the bank, and got among the top cover. The withering sword grasses, and tough strings of bindweed tying brambles and briars, and dry thorn branches laid lengthways across old bullock-broken gaps, moved and rustled as he drew’ his lean body under them. Crows and rooks followed him, flapping to where patches of white showed in the long net of grasses, and trying to perch on stalks of tansy, dock, and hogweed. Three times he was pecked as he traveled along the southern bank, but he reached the comer safely, and turned up the western bank toward Windwhistle Cross.
He pushed his sharp way among the brambles and grasses to the break made by the feet of bullocks scrambling over into the sunken lane below — where Mr. Ovey had peered. The gap of earth and stone was bare for two yards. On a stone bedded in the dry earth stood the great raven.
Now stoats — and their smaller relations, the weasels — possess strength and determination which last in fullness unto the moment of death; and the mind of Swagdagger was set upon getting to Windwhistle Cross. His small flat head, sharp as a white fang, pushed out of the grasses, moved up and down, swung sideways, while the nostrils worked nervously at all the hostile scents. The quick movements wove a hole in the grasses, which set around the thin neck like a collar. The gaze of the eyes wandered, then it rested on Kronk, standing a yard away.
Raven and stoat remained still, brown and pink eyes fixed in the same stare. All the lithe furious power of Swagdagger blazed in his eyes, for he dared not run forward. His tail swished the grasses behind him; fumes of anger drove the rooks into the upper air. And then, suddenly, at a new short Krai from Scar! the crow, the clamor ceased, and the air over Swagdagger’s head empt ied of wings. Raven, crows, rooks, daws, pies, thrushes, finches, tits, all flew away silently, big birds over the field, little birds along the hedge, leaving Swagdagger alone.
The stoat stepped through his grassy collar, smelled only furze bloom and foxglove in the air, saw the birds flying away, and forgot them. Without hesitation he ran down the bank and across the grass to his track; for he had never entered Windwhistle Cross any other way.
He was near the northern bank when the noise of wings made him stop and throw up his head. The buzzard, who had been sitting on the bank by the far corner, watching in curiosity the behavior of the birds, had been alarmed when they had suddenly flown away; but not having heard what they had seen in the sunken lane beyond, and being fearful of taking the air when raven and crow were about, it had continued to sit there. The white moving lure of Swagdaggcr was too strong for its caution; it forgot the general alarm, and flew over to the stoat.
On broad brown wings it sank upon Swagdagger, flapping to check its glide and stiffening its legs for the clutch. Swagdagger stood up to meet it with his teeth, but, as the buzzard was about to strike, it looked away, startled by an object appearing in the opening of the five-barred gate by the road. It was a black and white object, and a man moved behind it.
WIND WHISTLE CROSS ESTATE
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
The buzzard’s wings beat violently in alarm; and instantly they beat wildly, for Swagdagger’s teeth had pierced one of its legs above the knee. It rose up above the level of the bank, and tumbled sideways, the weight of the stoat struggling and twisting under it.
The buzzard unclenched its feet to be free, but they were clutched on nothing. It dived and tumbled, but could not shake off the jerking weight on its leg. It dropped toward the field again, meaning to stand on the stoat and rip it up with its hooked beak, as it had ripped up many rats and rabbits, but the shout of the man made it rise again.
Many feathers floated away in the wind over the spinney, as the hawk swooped and tumbled and recovered. The rooks, back at their potato digging (Mr. Ovey’s potatoes), looked up at the struggle. Some flew around the buzzard as it zigzagged overhead, and added their cawing to the wailing whistle of the hawk. Swagdagger held to the leg with his teeth and the long claws of his forepaws, and whenever the buzzard’s beak came forward to cut open his head he loosened his bite and snapped at the throat. Sometimes his tail was over his head, as he swung to the turns and somersaults of his enemy.
The flight took them away from the field, which was now distant by four lines of banks. After five minutes the wings of the buzzard flapped more heavily, and its tumblings were slower. Two claws of its right uninjured foot had pierced the loose skin of Swagdagger’s neck, and were clenched tightly. It flew as before, in and out of the cawing rooks, until its bitten leg began to give it pain, when it twirled and wailed toward the ground.
A final frenzied tumble in the air flung Swagdagger’s head near its own, and the buzzard’s beak opened to break his skull; but Swagdagger was quicker, and his teeth, like two rows of bone thorns, snapped in the feathers of the buzzard’s throat. The feathers sailed away, and he snapped again, but his teeth did not click. Hanging there, he steadily changed color, his head and neck and back and dripping tail, from white to dark red.
The banks grew larger, the field below wider, as he sank down to the earth. Near the earth the hawk began to strike with its feet and buffet with its wings, and to snap its beak; but Swagdagger held on, his eyes closed as he drew warm strength from his enemy.
The dying hawk thumped on the ground, Swagdagger riding on its back. The stoat rippled away, leaving a trail of small feathers sticking to the grasses. The idea of gett ing to his mate was still firmly fixed in his mind. He galloped gleefully, licking his jaws as he thought of the game he would play with his cubs.
He reached the three-acre field, and ran along his track. Halfway across he stopped, his nose working at the air that came in swirls from the bank. There was the smell of fresh-turned earth, blown with a strange and puzzling taint. He left his track, making a loop to avoid the unseen danger; for everything strange was dangerous to Swagdagger. Ten yards off the north bank he seemed to freeze, for his nostrils had dipped into a stream of strong, familiar scent — Man.
Mr. Ovey stood by his newly painted notice board, which leaned on the fivebarred gate. He was mopping his big face with a handkerchief, his hat pushed back from his pale forehead. A spade was stuck in a heap of earth at his feet. Mr. Ovey saw Swagdagger, and his eyes behind his glasses bulged. He started after him, shouting ‘Hi!’ when Swagdagger ran up the bank. When he got to the place where Swagdagger had climbed, Mr. Ovey said ‘D-!’ behind his teeth, for he saw nothing there,
Picking up a stick, Mr. Ovey hurried back through the gate, and round the outside corner of the lane. He was just in time to see a tail, tipped with black, disappear over the low bank at. the edge of the spinney. He scrambled through the brambles, holding out an arm to ward off low branches from knocking off his eyeglasses. Grasping the stick firmly, and with head held tense, Mr. Ovey walked warily through the beech trees, peering left and right.
He came to a woodpile, and had a glimpse of a smaller animal, with white patches on its light brown body, before it disappeared. Mr. Ovey, warm with excitement, crept forward, and waited for it to run out again. It came out by his feet, but ran in again before the blow fell. Mr. Ovey saw another peep out, and then another. The whole place was full of the little animals!
He began to pull at a branch on the top of the pile. He felt strong as he levered it up, and with a vigorous turning movement threw it down. Lovely white skins: they must be valuable ermines! Mr. Ovey imagined himself returning to London with a dozen or more pelts, to be made into a lining for his motor coat. He saw himself in the midst of wondering villagers, but swiftly thought, as he levered another heavy bough off the top of the pile, ‘No, keep it quiet! There might be money in it!’ Mr. Ovey was enjoying himself immensely. An expression was on his face familiar to many townsfolk who glanced at the advertisements of ‘Ovey’s Liver Salts — Get That Athlete’s Zest for a Farthing a Day.’ (For, although Mr. Ovey took the farthings rather than the salts, a certain vanity had made him pose for the senescent and fatuous individual depicted as leaping tables, sprinting after motor buses, and running on air, whose bounding vitality was asserted and reasserted to be due to Ovey’s Liver Salts.)
Mr. Ovey had thrown down four boughs when Swagdagger ran out of the pile. Swagdagger was in the greatest rage. He had been pestered and thwarted nearly all the morning, his play was interrupted (four cubs rolling him over and biting him with their milk teeth), and now his mate and cubs were threatened. He stood still, uttering whiny, champing noises — for a translation of which see the first paragraph of this story. When Mr. Ovey moved forward with uplifted stick, Swagdagger also moved forward. His harsh chakkering cry rattled in the spinney. He continued to approach Mr. Ovey, — fourteen inches of warning and aggression, — who said, ‘Grrr! Get out of it, you beast!’ as he struck with his stick, and missed.
Hak! Hak! Hak! Hak! Hak! Hak!
Now Mr. Ovey’s knowledge of and regard for the countryside were almost totally confined to its money-making possibilities, and he had not the least idea that birds and animals were very near in instincts and feelings to men and women, being of the original flesh and spirit; and he did not know that Swagdagger’s forefathers had run in Windwhistle Cross since the first beech tree, whose roots were long since crumbled in the ground, had sprung from a single seed planted by a rook, and founded the spinney. Mr. Ovey therefore was most surprised when, immediately after he had tried to hit another stoat with his stick, Swagdagger ran forward and started to climb up his trousers. Mr. Ovey shouted when the sharp claws pricked his knee, and struck at the animal with his hand; but so quick was Swagdagger, and so sure his eye, that he bit through the tip of a finger before the blow knocked him off.
Mr. Ovey turned to leave the spinney. He shouted for help when he saw other little animals running out of the woodpile. He blundered through the low branches to the bank, brambles clawing his clothes, and filling him with fear. He stopped in the lane, and to his horror saw that he was being followed. Hak! Hak! Hak! Hak! Hak! Hak!
Wheeling high over Windwhistle Cross, above the rooks and the crows, Kronk the raven watched Mr. Ovey running to the gate, pulling it open, and nearly falling over the strange black and white object that had been puzzling the wary Kronk. Mr. Ovey closed the gate, and, breathing heavily behind his notice board, felt safe on his own property.
‘Dangerous brutes,’ he puffed. ‘Poison . . . traps . . . what local authorities doing . . . permit it . . . phoo!’
He was pulling his handkerchief out of his cuff, where one had been tucked for many years, when the piebald family of Swagdagger ran round the corner.
Hak! Chakker! Hak!
Mr. Ovey ran as far as the middle of the field, then turned, and stared at the pack. He felt a dreadful desire to remain standing still. He gave an automatic glance round for a policeman.
High in the air the raven, who also had felt the fascination of being approached by a pack of hunting stoats, watched the man standing still until the white threads were almost to him. Only then did he turn and run to the lower bank. He scrambled up, and stood among the brambles, until the white threads reached the bank. He jumped down, with head turned to see if they were following.
Hak! Hak! Chakker-hak!
Wheeling on firm wings, the raven watched the man plodding across the next field, and the plunging canter of bullocks down wind when they got the musky scent of stoat. He watched him across another field, and so to the road.
Mr. Ovey ran on, slower and slower, groaning that if he only got out of this he would sell the beastly place, and give up smoking. He was chased almost to the farmhouse at the bottom of the hill, where a cat t le dog, which had been lying in the roadway, got up and loped forward to see what the trouble was; and made off at full speed when it smelled and saw.
Swagdagger forgot Mr. Ovey, and went under a gate into a field at the top of which was one of his playgrounds, a quarry, in which ironstone had been blasted for the widening of the motor road, and which the brambles were always trying to reclaim. Here they played awhile, and hunted rabbits, and washed themselves after their meal, imitating Swagdagger, who was busy with his tongue on ribs and back and tail. When they had played again, the white leader led the way back to Windwhistle Cross, running along the track, and crossing the field for the first time with that season’s jolly cubs.