Rancho Del Muerto and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors

At the mere mention of his name every eye brightened. Mr. Blount had more than one peculiarity, all of them pleasant. He was just one of those mortals whom mothers in their fatuity christen William. If ever there was a man born with an inalienable right to be called Billy it was he. A stranger meeting him in the road would know by intuition that that was his name. His twinkling eye suggested it. His ruddy brown dimpled cheek, his breadth of smile proclaimed it, and when he laughed every well-lined rib shouted aloud, “Our name is Billy!”

But he was not with us; so the next best thing was to tell stories of his exploits. To these I listened with wide-eyed delight. I will give one as a sample. But that it may be understood, it will be necessary to show beforehand the very unusual method of hunting that obtained in Scott County.

That portion of Mississippi was in those days almost uninhabited and was covered by a forest – it would be almost correct to call it a grove – of post oaks, beneath which grew waist high underbrush. The oaks which covered the ground almost to the exclusion of other trees stood so far apart that one had an outlook of perhaps a couple of hundred yards in every direction, so that a good rider could gallop in comfort along the open spaces. This tree bears a small but sweet nutritious acorn; hence the great store of deer that frequented these forests.

Such being the nature of the ground the chase is conducted as follows: The hunters throw themselves into a skirmish line at intervals of sixty or eighty yards. In the centre rides the leader of the hunt with a compass fixed upon the pommel of his saddle. The line advances through the woods due north, let us say, for a few hours; then wheels at right angle and moves east; then south, then west – back to camp, venison steaks and wild turkey; for, in the interests of better fare, it was permitted to knock over a gobbler if he were too hospitably saucy to get out of the way. The deer were not equally abundant year after year. Occasionally it was found that “black tongue” had worked havoc among them since the preceding hunt. But they were always numerous enough to maintain a continuous and intense glow of expectation in the breast of every hunter. As a rule you rode straight ahead, swerving neither to the right nor the left, every nerve on the alert, from sunrise till’ sunset. But if you saw a little out of your path an upturned tree you bent your course toward it, your heart in your mouth. I have known as many as seven deer to bound forth from the brown-leaved “lap” of one fallen oak. But at any moment during the day you were liable to be startled by a buck springing up out of the undergrowth, often from beneath the very feet of your horse.

Only an inexperienced hunter would ask: “Why not shoot them where they lie?” You do not know they are there. The detective eye that can make out the form of a deer crouched down on a bed of brown leaves and veiled with a fringe of underbrush is given to few. Among these favored ones was our friend Billy. It was generally believed in camp that he shot most of his game in their beds. Billy himself was at no pains, of course, to spread this view. In his highly-illustrated accounts of his achievements the quarry was always going like the wind; he had not been sure, in fact, what he fired at; he saw a brown flash, that was all; banged away, and down came that thumping buck. Never was so surprised in his life; thought it was a hawk or something. But this is the story of Mr. Jennings, brother of the leader of the hunt: “Blount rides on my right, and I don’t know how I shall get on without him, even for a day or two. However, I may live longer if he is not there, for he sows his buckshot broadcast. Three years ago – I never knew the deer so thick as they were that season – happening to look in his direction, I saw him dismounting with an agility that was surprising considering his 225 pounds. He halted me with an eager wave of his hand and began advancing on tiptoe; every fibre of his vast form tense, his eyes riveted upon some object in front, finger on trigger. Barely had he crept forward ten yards when up sprang a buck hardly twenty feet in front of him and darted to the rear, between Blount and me. Instantly, without once removing his eyes from the game upon which he was stealing, he whirled his gun to the right and pulled the trigger. The buck passed on, while twigs and bark rained on me from the whizzing buckshot. Would you believe it? – but you all know him – not a moment did he halt or once remove his eyes from whatever it was that had fascinated his gaze in front. He still danced forward, light as an Indian, with eyes starting from their sockets. Presently up jumps a doe. She, too, bounded to the rear, but on Blount’s left this time. Again, with his staring eyes still glued to the something in front – bang! ‘What in the – are you about?’ roared Parrish from Blount’s left; ‘you will be shooting somebody the first thing you know. Here is one of your crazy shot through my hat.’ To all which our wild man paid not the least attention. ‘Jennings! Jennings! come here! come here! come here! quick! quick! quick! For God’s sake, man, hurry!’

“I dismounted and ran up to him. ‘There! there! give it to him! Good Lord, man, can’t you see him? There, in that lap!’ I strained my eyes in vain. I could see nothing. ‘Why, don’t you see him turning his head? He is looking at us! My Lord, Jennings, gimme the gun! gimme the gun! gimme the gun!’ Just as I did so a noble buck sprang from the lap and bounded off. Blount drew down upon him. Bound after bound, and still Blount did not fire, though he seemed to be pulling away for dear life at the triggers. Presently the deer, passing behind a clump of trees, disappeared. I carried my gun at half cock. This Blount did not know or remember. He bent both my triggers. Any other man might very well have bagged all three deer with such a chance. And what do you suppose he then said? ‘At any rate, I laid out two of the rascals. Come, Jennings, help me find ‘em.’”

Dogs were not used on these hunts. Two or three trusty old hounds, it is true, hung about the heels of our leader’s horse, but they were employed only in running down badly-wounded animals. For the first day or so these dogs were hard to control, so rich was the scent that met their nostrils at every turn; but after the third day they grew too blasé to take any interest in any trail not sprinkled with blood. We had a number of horn signals. If a gun was heard, followed by a long blast (every man wore a horn), the line halted. A deer had been killed in its tracks. A second blast indicated that the quarry had been strapped behind the saddle of the lucky man; and once more the line moved forward. But if three or four short, excited toots, mingled with shouts, rang out upon the frosty air, a wounded deer was being pursued, and the leader of the hunt galloped up, followed by his little pack, who soon pulled down the game.

After all my boasting about the abundance of deer in these post-oak forests the reader is, I dare say, prepared to learn that with a party of fifteen the spoil of a ten-days hunt would be one thousand head at the very least. Great will be his surprise therefore to learn that at the close of our first day’s hunt we returned to camp without one solitary buck or doe to show to our disgusted cooks. Never had the game been so scarce, and yet not a man of us all had the same loads in his gun with which he had sallied gaily forth full of hope in the morning. One fine buck alone had emptied just thirty barrels for us. Flushed on the extreme right, he had bounded along in front of the whole line, a trifle out of range, perhaps, and each one of us had given him a roaring double salute. As the rolling thunder approached me I almost ceased to breathe. What were conjugations and declensions and rules of three compared with this! It was like a battle, as I have since discovered, with the notable difference that our side made all the noise, and the deer did not shoot back. But none of us had been able, in the language of Mr. Sam Weller’s Dick Turpin ditty, to “prewail upon him for to stop.” Other shots at other deer all of us had, but we supped on bacon that evening.

SECOND PART

ONE who has never tried the experiment can have no idea how easy it is to miss when firing from horseback at a buck who sends your heart up into your mouth by springing up from beneath your horse’s heels, and then speeds away, twisting and turning among the boles of the trees. Men who could bring down a partridge with each barrel have been known to shoot away half a bag of shot before they began to get the hang of the thing.

The shades of evening were falling. Humiliating though it was, we had fallen, too, with a will on our gameless supper.

“S-t! Listen! What’s that?”

We pricked up our ears. Presently there came softly echoing from far away in the forest a long-drawn cry, ringing, melodious, clear as a bugle call.

“Billy!”

The welkin rang with our joyous shouts. Half our party sprang to their feet and red-hot coffee splashed from tin cups. “Hurrah!”

“Marse Billy got the keenest holler I ever hear!” chuckled Beverly. “Bound he fetch luck ‘long wid him! No mo’ bacon for supper arter dis.”

We craned our necks to catch the first glimpse of our mascot. Obviously, from the direction of the joyous yells with which he answered our welcoming shouts, he had abandoned the road and was riding straight through the open woods. Presently we descried through the deepening twilight his portly form looming up atop a tall gray. Then two vivid flashes and two loud reports, followed by a mad rush of the gray, which came tearing down on us in wild terror, and for a minute we were treated to something like an amateur episode from one of Mr. Buffalo Bill’s entertainments. Amid roars of laughing welcome the ponderous knight was at last helped down from his trembling steed, whose bridle Beverly had been able luckily to snatch as he floundered among the tent ropes.

“And where the deuce did you pick up that wild beast? Surely you can’t expect to shoot from him!”

“Oh, I’ll cool him down in a day or two; he’ll soon get used to it.”

In point of fact a horse who dreads a gun gets more and more terror stricken as the hunt goes on, the mere sight of a deer, the cocking of a gun even, sufficing to set him off into plungings that grow day by day more violent. This none should have known better than Blount; for never, by any chance, did he ride to the hunt with an animal that would “stand fire.” The discharge of his gun, the rise of a buck even, was always the opening of a circus with him. But he managed invariably to let off both barrels – one perhaps through the tree tops, the other into the ground. In one particular alone was he provident. He brought always so immense a supply of ammunition that toward the close of the hunt his tent was a supply magazine to the less thoughtful.

“What!” exclaimed Blount, “not a single one! Ah! boys, that was because I was not with you.” The jovial soul had not a trace of conceit; he was merely sanguine – contagiously, gloriously, magnificently sanguine.

“Ah, but won’t we knock ‘em over tomorrow!” And straightway we lifted up our hearts and had faith in this prophet of pleasant things.

“Beverly, will that mule Ned stand fire?”

“I dunno, Marse Billy; nobody ain’t nebber tried him. But I ‘spec’ you wouldn’t ax him no odds.”

“I’ll go and have a look at him.”

Shortly afterward we heard two tremendous explosions, followed by a frenzied clatter of hoofs and the sound of breaking branches, and up there came, running and laughing, a Monsieur Wynen, a Belgian violinist, a real artist, who was one of our party (though never a trigger did he pull during the entire hunt).

“What’s the matter?”

Wynen was first violin in an opera troupe.

“It is only Blount rehearsing Ned.”

Any man in the world except Blount would have tested that demure wheel mule’s views as to firearms by firing off his gun in his neighborhood as he stood tethered. Not so Billy. Mounting the guileless and unsuspecting Ned, and casting the reins upon his bristly neck, he had let drive.

Shocked beyond expression by the dreadful roar and flash (it was now night) Ned had made a mad rush through the woods. In vain; for Blount had a good seat. Then had there come into Ned’s wily brain the reminiscence of a trick that he had never known to fail in thirty years. He stopped suddenly, still as a gate post, at the same time bracing his vertebrae into the similitude of a barrel hoop, and instantly Blount lay sprawling upon his jolly back; and there was a second roar, followed by a rush of buckshot among the leaves and around the legs of the audience that was watching the rehearsal. “Never mind, Jack,” said he to me, shortly afterward, “I’ll find something that will stand fire” and throwing his arm around my shoulder for a confidential talk of the slaughter he was to do on the morrow, his sanguine soul bubbled into my sympathetic ear:

“I say, Jack, don’t tell the boys; but I have got two bags of shot. They would laugh, of course. Now, how many ought a fellow to bring down with two bags? I mean a cool-headed chap who does not lose his head. How does one dozen to the bag strike you? Reasonable? H’m? Of course. Twenty-four, then. Well, let us say twenty-five, just to round off things. Golly! Why, nine is the highest score I ever made. Twenty-five! Why, that is a quarter of a hundred. Did you notice that? Whee-ew! The boys will stop bedeviling me after that, h’m? I should say so. Not a rascal of them all ever killed so many. Cool and steady, that’s the thing, my boy. Up he jumps! What of that? Don’t be flustered, I tell you. Count ten. Then lower your gun. There is not the least hurry in the world. Drop the muzzle on his side, just behind his shoulder. Steady! Let him think you are not after deer this morning. If it is a doe let it appear that you are loaded for buck. Bang! Over he tumbles in his tracks. You load up and are off again. Up hops another – a beauty. Same tactics – boo-doo-ee! Got him! What’s the sense of throwing away your shot? Costs money – delays the line. Cool – cool and steady – that’s the word, my boy. Get any shots to-day? Three? Hit anything?”

It was too dark for him to see how pale I went at this question. “Mr. Blount,” said I, with a choking in my throat (nobody could help telling the big-hearted fellow everything), “you won’t tell my father, will you?”

“Tell him what?”

“Well, you see, he cautioned me over and over again never, under any circumstances, to fire at a deer that ran toward a neighboring huntsman.”

“Of course not – never!” echoed Blount with conviction.

“And to-day – and to-day, when I was not thinking of such a thing, a big buck jumped up from right under my horse’s belly, and did you notice that gray-headed old gentleman by the fire? Well, the buck rushed straight toward him – and I forgot all about what my father had said and banged away.”

“Did you pepper him?” put in Billy eagerly.

“Pepper him!”

“I mean the buck.”

“I don’t know, he went on.”

“They will do it, occasionally, somehow.”

“When I saw the leaves raining down on the old gentleman, my heart stopped beating. You will not tell my father?”

“Pshaw! There was no harm done. We must trust to Providence in these matters. What did the old gentleman say?”

“Not a word; it was his first campaign, too. His eyes were nearly popping out of his head. He let off both barrels. The shot whistled around me!”

“The old fool! He ought to know better. To-morrow your father must put you next to me.”

Blount brought us hilarity and hope, but no luck, at any rate at first. When we rode slowly into camp on the following day, just as the sun went down, we had one solitary doe to show. Blount – Blount of all men – had killed it. The servants hung it up on one of the poles that remained from year to year stretched against the neighboring trees.

Owing to Blount’s weight his game was always strapped behind some less lucky huntsman; so we had had no opportunity of examining his riddled quarry.

“Why, how is this?” exclaimed he. “Oh, I remember; the other side was toward me.”

We went around to the other side. Had the doe died of fright? After much searching we found one bullet hole just behind the shoulder. Blount always put four extra bullets into his load. So he had showered down forty buckshot upon a doe lying in her bed at a distance of twenty feet and struck her with one.