University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE GRALLOCHING.

Two minutes had not passed between Archer's sinking
to the ground exhausted, and Pierson's arrival on
the scene of action. For, seeing his young companion
fall, as it seemed to him, so suddenly, he imagined that
he had received some hurt from the antlers of the
wounded stag, in its death-struggle, and in consequence
redoubled his pace down the uneven slope, throwing
away his rifle in order to reach the place more speedily.

During the few seconds that Harry's insensibility
lasted, Smoker had applied himself assiduously, in the
height of his dog-affection, to licking the face and
hands of his master, over and over again, until he had
communicated to them no small quantity of the blood
which had flowed from the hart's death-wound, and
which he had been lapping greedily. So, that when
Pierson came up, he presented a singularly ghastly and
almost appalling spectacle; for, between fatigue, loss

of breath, and excitement, his face was ashy pale, and
the streaks of frothy arterial blood which crossed it in
many places, gave it exactly the resemblance of the
countenance of one violently slain.

A loud exclamation of dismay and grief burst from
the lips of the rude forester, as he knelt down by
Harry's side, raised his head upon his knee, and gazed
wistfully into his face.

At this moment, however, the brief fit of exhaustion
and faintness passed away; and, as Archer's eyes reopened
and fell full upon the hard angular features of
the Dutch hunter, grotesquely distorted from the effects
of sorrow and apprehension, he burst at once into a loud
hearty laugh, which instantly reassured his friend, and
satisfied him that he was not seriously endangered.

“That's right; that's right, Mr. Aircher!” cried the
good fellow cheerfully, though a big tear, the offspring
of strangely mingled feelings, was rolling down his
dry withered cheek—“laugh at the old fool e'en as much
as you will; right glad I am to hear you laugh inyhow.
I niver thought to hear you laugh agin, I didn't.”

“Why, what the deuce ails you, Dolph?” eried
Harry, springing to his feet, as brisk as ever; “or what
should ail me, that I should never laugh again? The
devil's in it, if, after running two miles over such ground
as I have just run, and at such a pace too, a fellow
may not lie down on the grass and rest himself. I was

dead blown, old fellow, nothing more. A good pull at
the Ferintosh will bring me about in a jiffy.”

“But what's all that 'ere blood comed from, say?”

“Blood! what blood? man-alive, I believe you're
drunk or dreaming!”

“On your face, Mister Aircher. Arn't it your blood?
well, I thought it was, for sartin!”

“I do not know,” said Areher. “No, it's not my
blood, I'm not hurt;” and as he spoke he raised his
handkerchief to his face, and with the aid of a little
water from the brook soon washed away the filthy witness
from his face. Then seeing Smoker, who, relieved
from all anxiety about his master, had buried his sharp
muzzle in the wide death-wound of the buck—“There
is the culprit,” he added; “poor devil, I suppose he
fell to licking my face, when he saw me lie down.”

“Well, yes, he was a kind o' nuzzlin' at you, when I
seed him, and I'm an old fool, inyhow, not to have
thought of that afore. But do you call that lyin' down?
It looked a darned sight liker fallin'.”

“Well, well, never mind which it was, Dolph. All's
right now; so don't say a word about it, when those
chaps come up; Fat Tom would crow for a whole
month, if he got hold of such a story on me.”

“Niver a word, I,” replied the hunter. “But come,
it's past now, and we've got e'enamost more nor we
we can do, to git these four bucks broken and hung up,

so as we can jine old Tom and that 'ere fancy chap
down at the outlet.”

“Well, let's be doing,” answered Harry; “but first
run to the brook, Dolph, won't you? and fetch us up
your big tin-cup full of water. For all the water's so
cold, I want a long drink, I tell you.”

“Here 'tis,” replied old Dolph, as quick as light.
“I've drinkt out on't, myself. But I guess you won't
stand for that.”

“Not I, indeed,” said Harry, bolting the liquor. “Now
I'm your man for anything—what's to be done first?”

“Fust! why fust we've jest got to go and find our
rifles, and load up. Where's yourn?”

“By the other hart, on the brook's edge. I threw it
down that I might help Smoker with this fellow, who
would, I thought, prove too tough a match for him.
Where's yours?”

“Somewheres on yan hill-side; I throwed it down
when I seed you fall. I dun' know wheres—but I can
find it, inyhow, by taking the back track.”

“Look here, then, let us gralloch this hart first, and
hang him somewhere. We'll have to carry him a hundred
yards, to that tree; and as we have got four to
look after, we must lose no time, and take no steps
twice over. I'll break him up,” he added, tucking up
his sleeves and drawing his long knife. “Do you run
and cut a ten-foot pole, stout enough to carry him, in
the coppice yonder.”

No sooner said than done; and before Harry had
cleared the carcass of the offal, on which Master Smoker
blew himself out till he could hardly stir, Dolph
returned bearing a young straight dog-wood tree, of
some three inches diameter at the but, by ten or twelve
feet in length, which he had hewn down, and shaped
radely with his keen tomahawk.

“That's your sort, Dolph!” cried the young Englishman,
who had by this time interlinked the legs of the
hart through the perforated sinews, as cooks will do
those of a partridge before roasting. “Shove it through
here. Put your shoulder to that end, and I'll hoist this.
Oh-he-ave!”

And, with the word, they raised the noble buck, pendent
from the pole, back and head downward, and
walked away cheerily under the heavy load, to the spot
where the other had fallen close to the ravine's edge.
Here Archer's rifle was recovered, and duly loaded;
and the operation of breaking, or butchering, having
been performed on that hart likewise, Harry mounted
to the fork of a young hickory which grew hard by, and,
with Pierson's assistance, hoisted one up on either side
the stem, and left them hanging there, a noble trophy,
the one with six points, the other with seven, to its
widespread and formidable antlers.

Thence they had a long and tedious walk up hill to
the spot where Dolph had east down his rifle, and a
weary search ere they found it. A search rewarded

only by success at last, in consequence of the extreme
sagacity of the Dutch hunter, and the houndlike instinctive
skill with which he tracked the light prints, invisible
to any eye less practised than his own, of his own
bounding footsteps on the dry grass, and among the
leafless bushes.

Archer, who had attained not a little of that Indian
art of following the trail, had long been at fault utterly;
and, quite unable to discover any sign where Dolph
asserted positively that he could see clearly his whole
footstep, heel and toe, had given up all hope of finding
the weapon.

This task at last accomplished, and the unerring
piece loaded with the minute and patient exactness
which is so perfectly characteristic of the true back-woodsman,
the hardy pair set forth again; and after
scrambling up the tangled and broken slopes of the burnt
pasturage for something better than half an hour, reached
the foot of the cliffs at about half a mile's distance from
the mouth of the ravine through which Harry had descended.
Here the same ceremony was performed on
Dolph's stag which they had already completed on the
others, and when he had been drawn up by the heels to
a dwarf oak, which shot out of the crag's face, nothing
remained for them to do, but to descend leisurely by
the brook's edge to the scathed tree, at the foot of
which lay the great mouse-coloured hart, which had
rewarded Archer's toilsome descent of the gully.

“It's him, by the Etarnal!” cried old Dolph, the
moment his eye fell on the carcass of the monstrous
animal. “It's him, Aircher, else I'll niver pull a trigger
arter this day! Give us your hand, boy; you've
done that this day, as 'll be talked on hereaways, arter
we're both cold and under the green sod. Yes, yes,
it's him, sartin. There's the crook horn, and there's
the white spot on his hither side, whar' poor Jim Buckley's
bullet went clar through him, as I've heern say by
them that was alivin' them days, these fourscore year
agone, and better. And they do tell as he was then,
what you dalls a hart royal, with a full head I means.
There's not a hunter in the range, as his father and his
grand'ther hasn't run this fellow, as lies here now
so quiet, with hounds, and on snow-shoes, in light
snows and on deep crusts fifty times, and niver got
within rifle range, 'ceptin Jim Buckley, and he lied in
wait for him like, over ten nights in May, up in the
crotch of a big tree, whar' he come bellin' for his hinds,
nigh whares he'd seen the frayin' of his horns like, on
the ragged stems, and so he shot him through and
through, with an ounce-bullet from an old-fashioned
yager, as was tuk from them Hoosian chaps at Trenton
in the Jarseys—but Lord a' massy, Mr. Aircher, he
stopped no mores for that ounce-bullet, than you'd stop
for a darned musquito bite when the hounds was makin'
music in a run way. He rared right stret an cend, and
shuck himself, and looked kind a savage like at Jim,

and went off through the woods jest the same as though
nauthen ailed him—and nauthen did ail him, likely.”
Here the old hunter paused, looked about him with a
furtive and uneasy eye, and then added in a low voice,
as if he were half ashamed of the thoughts to which
he was about to give utterance, or fearful of uttering
them. “But su'thin ailed Jim Buckley arterward, they
doos say, Mr. Aircher, for that same day one year arter
a rifle went off of itself like in his partner's hand, and
the ball struck him nigh the blade-bone of his right
shoulder, and quartered through him, and comed out jest
in his flank under the lowest rib—jest the identical shot
as he gave the stag—but Jim was a dead man in five
minutes; and the ball, it warn't nauthen but a little
triflin' fawty to the pound slug. I'm kinder sorry arter
all that you shot him; they doos tell 'at no one niver
had no luck arterward that had so much as chased him,
let alone shot him.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Archer merrily—“Why,
Dolph, old lad, are you beside yourself this fine morning!
Why, to my certain knowledge, you have hunted him
with me three several times yourself, and shot at him
once, and I never heard yet of any very bad luck that
had befallen you—”

“Nor of none very good, nuther, I'm athinkin';”
interpolated Dolph, with an incredulous shake of the
head. But Harry proceeded as if he had not heard him,

“And for the rest, Dolph, you may be perfectly easy

for this time, I think. For you had certainly no hand
in this job from the beginning to the end. It was I,
who viewed him from the crags with my naked eye,
when you overlooked him; it was I who recognised
him for the old crookhorn, with my glass; I who
stalked, I who shot, I who bled him; and I, Dolph,
who will bear the brunt right merrily of anything that
is like to befall me in consequence. Come, man alive,
don't look so wo-begone after the best morning's work
that has been done on the burnt pasture, these ten
years or better.”

“These twinty year, I guess. But I ar'n't downcast
none, nor I don't believe the one-half of their parleyin'.
But you keeps a askin' me ivery now and then to tell
you the old talk of our wood-lads hereaways, and then
when I doos, you laughs at me.”

“Not I! not I!” said Archer, who had been busy
cleaning the carcass, while Dolph was ruminating on
the old-time superstition—“By the Lord Harry! four
inches of clear fat on the brisket!” he ejaculated on a
sudden. “I will dissect a dozen or so of these short
ribs, Dolph, and with a bit of salt and pepper out of
my pouch, we will make a broil down by the lake-shore,
yonder, and with the hard biscuit and cold pork and
onions, and the drop of Ferintosh, we will have a feast
fit for kings, by the time those fellows come along. I'd
ber a trifle they haven't beat us yet awhile.”

“There ar'n't no two men on this airth as kin,” replied

the old hunter, looking with an admiring eye at
his companion. “For I will say that afore your face,
as I've said many's the time ahind your back, yourn
is the quickest eye, the steadiest hand, the coolest
heart, and the fastest foot, I iver see on hill or in valley.
Mine ar'n't so quick, or sure, or cool, by many
a sight, nowadays. I dun' know as they iver was; and
for fastness, why when I was a boy, you'd have outrun
me jest as I kin a mud-turkle; and then for knowin' sign
and followin' trail, and specially for puttin' things together,
and seein' what the hull sum of them tells—
though you was green as grass, and helpless as a year-old
babby when I seed you fust—there's not a many
as kin beat you hereaways, nor in the far west nuther.
Now, if I'd bin and done a wrong thing inyhow, and
kivered it up close so's no one should find it out who
dun it, and then med tracks, I'd rather fifty times have
fifty Feeladelfy lawyers, and half the woodmen in the
range arter my heels, as jest you onaccompanied like.”

“Hush! hush! Dolph, you'll put me to the blush,
old boy; whatever little I may know of the woods and
woodcraft, I owe it all to you.”

“There ain't nothin', Aircher, in hearin' the truth,
or in tellin' the truth, right out, up and down, as should
make no gal blush, let alone no man. And it's truth
that I tell you. Hallo! what's that—?” as the distant
crack of a rifle came up the light air to their ears, from
the lake-shore.

Both turned their eyes instantly toward the point
whence the sound came, and a thin wreath of bluish
smoke was seen to curl lazily above the underwood and
to melt into the transparent skies. A moment afterward,
at about two hundred paces' distance from the spot
where the smoke was disappearing, a noble buck darted
from the covert at full speed, and plunging into the
lake, oared himself with his fleet limbs gallantly across
the limpid sheet, his graceful neck and antlered crest
showing like the prow and figure-head of some stately
galley, with the blue water rippling before the smooth
velocity of his motion.

A minute afterward, a man showed himself, rifle in
hand, examining the bushes and the grass under foot,
in search of blood or hair, or the track of the bullet,
thereby to judge whether his shot had been effective.

“Ay! ay!” said Archer, laughing, as he recognised
the gay garb of his friend by aid of his telescope, “you
may look there these ten years, Master Frank, and
find no sign. That was a clear miss; hey, Dolph?”

“In course it was. Who iver see a man in sich
fancy garments as them are, do anything but miss?”

“He does not always miss, I can tell you, by a long
way, Dolph,” said Harry. “But come, let's be
tramping. They are nigher to our meeting-place than
we are.”

“But we'll do the distance in jest half the time.”

“True. But let's do it easy.”