 | THE OUTLYING STAG. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago |  |
5. THE OUTLYING STAG.
It was still pitch dark, although the skies were quite clear and
cloudless, when Harry, Frank, and the Commodore re-assembled on
the following morning in Tom's best parlor, preparatory to the stag
hunt which, as determined on the previous night, was to be their
first sporting move in the valley.
Early, however, as it was, Timothy had contrived to make a
glorious fire upon the hearth, and to lay out a slight breakfast of
biscuits, butter, and cold beef, flanked by a square case-bottle of
Jamaica, and a huge jorum of boiled milk. Tom Draw had not yet
made his appearance, but the sound of his ponderous tramp, mixed
with strange oaths and loud vociferations, showed that he was on
foot, and ready for the field.
“I'll tell you what, Master A—,” said Archer, as he stood with
his back to the fire, mixing some rum with sugar and cold water,
previous to pouring the hot milk into it—“You'll be so cold in that
light jacket on the stand this morning, that you'll never be able to
hold your gun true, if you get a shot. It froze quite hard last night,
and there's some wind, too, this morning.”
“That's very true”—replied the Commodore—“but devil a thing
have I got else to wear, unless I put on my great coat, and that's
too much the other way—too big and clumsy altogether. I shall
do well enough, I dare say; and after all, my drilling jacket is not
much thinner than your fustian.”
“No”—said Harry—but you do n't fancy that I'm going out in
this, do you?—No! no! I'm too old a hand for that sort of thing—
I know that to shoot well, a man must be comfortable, and I mean
to be so. Why, man, I shall put on my Canadian hunting shirt
over this”—and with the word he slipped a loose frock, shaped
much like a wagoner's smock, or a Flemish blouse, over his head,
with large full sleeves, reaching almost to his knees, and belted
round his waist, by a broad worsted sash. This excellent garment
was composed of a thick coarse homespun woollen, bottle-green in
color, with fringe and bindings of dingy red, to match the sash about
his waist, From the sash was suspended an otter skin pouch, containing
bullets and patches, nipple wrench and turn-screw, a bit of
dry tow, an oiled rag, and all the indispensables for rifle cleaning;
while into it were thrust two knives—one a broad two-edged implement,
with a stout buck-horn haft, and a blade of at least twelve
inches—the other a much smaller weapon, not being, hilt and all,
half the length of the other's blade, but very strong, sharp as a
razor, and of surpassing temper. While he was fitting all these in
their proper places, and slinging under his left arm a small buffalo
horn of powder—he continued talking—
“Now”—he said—“if you take my advice, you'll go into my
room, and there, hanging against the wall, you'll find my winter
of pilot cloth, lined throughout with flannel. It will fit you just as
well as your own, for we're pretty much of a size. Frank, there,
will wear his old monkey jacket, the skirts of which he razeed last
winter for the very purpose. Ah, here is Brower—just run up,
Brower, and bring down my shooting jacket off the wall from behind
the door—look sharp, will you!—Now, then, I shall load, and
I advise you both to do likewise; for it's bad work doing that same
with cold fingers.”
Thus saying, he walked to the corner, and brought out his rifle,
a heavy single barrel, carrying a ball of eighteen to the pound,
quite plain but exquisitely finished. Before proceeding, however,
to load, he tried the passage of the nipple with a fine needle—three
or four of which, thrust into a cork, and headed with sealing wax,
formed a portion of the contents of his pouch—brushed the cone, and
the inside of the hammer, carefully, and wiped them, to conclude,
with a small piece of clean white kid—then measuring his powder
out exactly, into a little charger screwed to the end of his ramrod,
he inverted the piece, and introduced the rod upward till the cup
reached the chamber; when, righting the gun, he withdrew it,
leaving the powder all lodged safely at the breech, without the loss
of a single grain in the groovings. Next, he chose out a piece of
leather, the finest grained kid, without a seam or wrinkle, slightly
greased with the best watch-maker's oil—selected a ball perfectly
round and true—laid the patch upon the muzzle, and placing the
bullet exactly in the centre over the bore, buried it with a single
rap of a small lignum vitæ mallet, which hung from his button-hole;
and then, with but a trifling effort, drove it home by one steady
thrust of the stout copper-headed charging rod. This done, he
again inspected the cone, and seeing that the powder was forced
quite up into sight, picked out, with the same anxious scrutiny that
had marked all of his proceedings, a copper cap, which he pronounced
sure to go, applied it to the nipple, crushed it down firmly, with
the hammer, which he then drew back to half-cock, and bolted.
Then he set the piece down by the fireside, drained his hot jorum,
and—
“That fellow will do his work, and no mistake”—said he—
“Now A—, here is my single gun”—handing to him, as he spoke,
one of the handsomest Westley Richards a sportsman ever handled
—“thirty-three inches, nine pounds and eleven gauge. Put in
one-third above that charger, which is its usual load, and one of
those green cartridges, and I'll be bound that it will execute at
eighty paces; and that is more than Master Frank there can say
for his Manton Rifle, at least if he loads it with bullets patched in
that slovenly and most unsportsmanlike fashion.”
“I should like to know what the deuce you mean by slovenly
and unsportsmanlike”—said Frank, pulling out of his breast pocket
a couple of bullets, carefully sewed up in leather—“it is the best
plan possible, and saves lots of time—you see I can just shove my
balls in at once, without any bother of fitting patches.”
“Yes”—replied Harry—“and five to one the seam, which, however
neatly it is drawn, must leave a slight ridge, will cross the
direction of the grooving, and give the ball a counter movement;
either destroying altogether the rotatory motion communicated by the
rifling, or causing it to take a direction quite out of the true line;
accordingly as the counteraction is conveyed near the breech, or
near the muzzle of the piece.”
“Will so trifling a cause produce so powerful an effect?” inquired
the Commodore.
“The least variation, whether of concavity or convexity in the
bullet, will do so unquestionably—and I cannot see why the same
thing in a covering superinduced to the ball should not have the
same effect. Even a hole in a pellet of shot will cause it to leave
the charge, and fly off at a tangent. I was once shooting in the
fens of the Isle of Ely, and fired at a mallard sixty or sixty-five
yards off, with double B shot, when to my great amazement a workman—digging
peat at about the same distance from me with the
bird, but at least ninety yards to the right of the mallard—roared
out lustily that I had killed him. I saw that the drake was knocked
over as dead as a stone, and consequently laughed at the fellow,
and set it down as a cool trick to extort money, not uncommon
among the fen men, as applied to members of the University. I
had just finished loading, and my retriever had just brought in the
dead bird, which was quite riddled, cut up evidently by the whole
body of the charge—both the wings broken, one in three places,
one leg almost dissevered, and several shots in the neck and body—
when up came my friend, and sure enough he was hit—one pellet
had struck him on the cheek bone, and was imbedded in the skin.
Half a crown, and a lotion of whiskey—not applied to the part, but
taken inwardly—soon proved a sovereign medicine, and picking out
the shot with the point of a needle, I found a hole in it big enough to
admit a pin's head, and about the twentieth part of an inch in depth.
This I should think is proof enough for you—but, besides this, I
have seen bullets in pistol-shooting play strange vagaries, glancing
off from the target at all sorts of queer angles.”
“Well! well!”—replied Frank, “my rifle shoots true enough for
me—true enough to kill generally—and who the deuce can be at
the bother of your pragmatical preparations? I am sure it might be
said of you, as it was of James the First, of most pacific and pedantic
memory, that you are “Captain of arts and Clerk of arms”—at
least you are a very pedant in gunnery.”
“No! no!” said A—; “You're wrong there altogether, Master
Forester; there is nothing on earth that makes so great a difference
in sportsmanship as the observation of small things. I do n't
call him a sportsman who can walk stoutly, and kill well, unless he
can give causes for effects—unless he knows the haunts and habits
both of his game and his dogs—unless he can give a why for every
wherefore!”
“Then devil a bit will you ever call me one”—answered Frank
—“For I can't be at the trouble of thinking about it.”
“Stuff—humbug—folly”—interupted Archer—“you know a
d—d deal better than that—and so do we, too!—you're only cranky!
a little cranky, Frank, and given to defending any folly you commit
without either rhyme or reason—as when you tried to persuade
me that it is the safest thing in nature to pour gunpowder out of
a canister into a pound flask, with a lighted cigar between your
teeth; to demonstrate which you had scarcely screwed the top of
the horn on, before the lighted ashes fell all over it—had they done
so a moment sooner, we should all have been blown out of the
room.”
By this time, the Commodore had donned Harry's winter jacket,
and Frank, grumbling and paradoxizing all the while, had loaded
his rifle, and buttoned up his pea-jacket, when in stalked Tom,
swathed up to his chin in a stout dreadnought coat.
“What are ye lazin' here about?”—he shouted—“you're niver
ready no how—Jem's been agone these two hours, and we'll jest
be too late, and miss gittin' a shot—if so be there be a buck—which
I'll be sworn there arn't!”
“Ha! ha!”—the Commodore burst out—“ha! ha! ha!—I
should like to know which side the laziness has been on this morning,
Mister Draw.”
“On little wax skin's there”—answered the old man, as quick as
lightning—“the little snoopin' critter carn't find his gloves now;
though the nags is at the door, and we all ready. We'll drink, boys,
while he's lookin' arter 'em—and then when he's found them, and 's
jest a gittin' on his horse, he'll find he's left his powder-horn or
knife, or somethin' else, behind him; and then we'll drink agin,
while he snoops back to fetch it.”
“You be hanged, you old rascal”—replied Forester, a little bothered
by the huge shouts of laughter which followed this most
strictly accurate account of his accustomed method of proceeding;
an account which, by the way, was fully justified not twenty
minutes afterward, by his galloping back, neck or nothing, to get
his pocket handkerchief, which he had left “in course,” as Tom
said, in his dressing-gown beside the fire.
“Come, bustle—bustle!” Harry added, as he put on his hunting
cap and pulled a huge pair of fen boots on, reaching to the mid-thigh,
which Timothy had garnished with a pair of bright English
spurs. In another minute they were all on horseback, trotting
away at a brisk pace toward the little glen, wherein, according to
Jem's last report, the stag was harbored. It was in vain that during
their quick ride the old man was entreated to inform them where
they were to take post, or what they were to do, as he would give
them no reply, nor any information whatever.
At last, however, when Forester rejoined them, after his return
to the village, he turned short off from the high road to the left,
and as he passed a set of bars into a wild hill pasture, struck into a
hard gallop.
Before them lay the high and ridgy head of Round Top, his
flanks sloping toward them, in two broad pine-clad knobs, with a
swamp of small extent, but full of tall dense thornbushes, matted
with vines and cat-briers, and carpeted with a rich undergrowth of
fern and wintergreen, and whortleberries. To the right and left of
the two knobs or spurs just mentioned, were two other deep gorges,
or dry channels, bare of brushwood, and stony—rock-walled, with
steep precipitous ledges toward the mountain, but sloping easily up
to the lower ridges. As they reached the first of these, Tom motioned
Forester to stop.
“Stand here,” he whispered, “close in here, jest behind this
here crag—and look out hereaways toward the village. If he
comes down this runway, kill him, but mind you doos n't show a
hair out of this corner; for Archer, he'll stand next, and if so be he
crosses from the swamp hole hereaways, you'll chance to get a
bullet. Be, still, now, as a mouse, and tie your horse here in the
cove!—Now, lads”—
And off he set again, rounded the knob, and making one slight
motion toward the nook, wherein he wished that Harry should keep
guard, wheeled back in utter silence, and very slowly—for they
were close to the spot wherein, as they supposed, the object of their
chase was laid up; and as yet but two of his paths were guarded
toward the plain; Jem and his comrades having long since got with
the hounds into his rear, and waiting only for the rising of the sun
to lay them on, and push along the channel of the brook.
This would compel him to break covert, either directly from the
swamp, or by one of the dry gorges mentioned. Now, therefore,
was the crisis of the whole matter; for if—before the other passes
were made good—the stag should take alarm, he might steal off
without affording a chance of a shot, and get into the mountains to
the right, where they might hunt him for a week in vain.
No marble statue could stand more silently or still than Harry
and his favorite gray, who, with erected ears and watchful eye,
trembling a little with excitement, seemed to know what he was
about, and to enjoy it no less keenly than his rider. Tom and the
Commodore, quickening their pace as they got out of ear-shot, retraced
their steps quite back to the turnpike road, along which
Harry saw them gallop furiously, in a few minutes, and turn up,
half a mile off, toward the further gulley—he saw no more, however;
though he felt certain that the Commodore was, scarce ten
minutes after he lost sight of them, standing within twelve paces of
him, at the further angle of the swamp—Tom having warily determined
that the two single guns should take post together, while the
two doubles should be placed where the wild quarry could get off
encountering but a single sportsman.
It was a period of intense excitement before the sun rose, though
it was of short duration—but scarcely had his first rays touched the
open meadow, casting a huge gray shadow from the rounded hill
which covered half the valley, while all the farther slope was laughing
in broad light, the mist wreaths curling up, thinner and thinner
every moment from the broad streamlet in the bottom, which here
scarcely had his first rays topped the hill, before a distant shout
came swelling on the air, down the ravine, announcing Jem's approach.
No hound gave tongue, however, nor did a rustle in the
brake, or any sound of life, give token of the presence of the game
—louder and nearer drew the shouts—and now Harry himself began
to doubt if there were any truth in Jem's relation, when suddenly
the sharp quick crack of Forester's rifle gave token that the
game was afoot—a loud yell from that worthy followed.
“Look out! Mark—back—mark back!”
And keenly Archer did look out, and warily did he listen—once
he detected, or fancied he detected, a rustling of the underwood,
and the crack of a dry stick, and dropping his reins on the horse's
neck, he cocked his rifle—but the sound was not repeated, nor did
any thing come into sight—so he let down the hammer once again,
and resumed his silent watch, saying to himself—
“Frank fired too quick, and he has headed up the brook to Jem.
If he is forward enough now, we shall have him back instantly,
with the hounds at his heels; but if he has loitered and hung back,
`over the hills and far away' is the word for this time.”
But Jem was in his place, and in another moment a long whoop
came ringing down the glen, and the shrill yelping rally of the
hounds as they all opened on a view together! Fiercer and wilder
grew the hubbub! And now the eager watcher might hear the
brushwood torn in all directions by the impetuous passage of the
wild deer and his inveterate pursuers.
“Now, then, it is old Tom's chance, or ours,” he thought, “for
he will not try Forester again, I warrant him, and we are all down
wind of him—so he can't judge of our whereabouts.”
In another second the bushes crashed to his left hand, and behind
him, while the dogs were raving scarcely a pistol-shot off, in the
tangled swamp. Yet he well knew that if the stag should break
there it would be A—'s shot, and, though anxious, he kept his
eye fixed steadily on his own point, holding his good piece cocked
and ready.
“Mark! Harry, mark him!”—a loud yell from the Commodore.
The stag had broken midway between them, in full sight of
A—, and seeing him, had wheeled off to the right. He was now
sweeping onward across the open field with high graceful bounds,
tossing his antlered head aloft, as if already safe, and little hurt, if
any thing, by Jem Lyn's boasted shot of the last evening. The gray
stood motionless, trembling, however, palpably, in every limb, with
eagerness—his ears laid flat upon his neck, and cowering a little,
as if he feared the shot, which it would seem his instinct told him
to expect. Harry had dropped his reins once more, and levelled
his unerring rifle—yet for a moment's space he paused, waiting for
A— to fire; there was no hurry for himself, nay, a few seconds
more would give him a yet fairer shot, for the buck now was running
partially toward him, so that a moment more would place him
broadside on, and within twenty paces.
“Bang!” came the full and round report of A—'s large shot-gun,
fired before the beast was fifteen yards away from him. He
had aimed at the head, as he was forced to do, lest he should spoil
the haunches, for he was running now directly from him—and had
the buck been fifty paces off he would have killed him dead, lodging
his whole charge, or the best part of it, in the junction of the
neck and skull—but as it was, the cartridge—the green cartridge—
had not yet spread at all; nor had one buckshot left the case!
Whistling like a single ball, as it passed Harry's front eight or nine
yards off, it drove, as his quick eye discovered, clean through the
stag's right ear, almost dissevering it, and making the animal bound
six feet off the green sward.
Just as he touched the earth again, alighting from his mighty
spring, with an aim sure and steady, and a cool practised finger, the
marksman drew his trigger, and, quick as light, the piece—well
loaded, as its dry crack announced—discharged its ponderous missile!
But, bad luck on it, even at that very instant, just in the
point of time wherein the charge was ignited, eighteen or twenty
quail, flushed by the hubbub of the hounds, rose with a loud and
startling whirr, on every side of the gray horse, under his belly and
about his ears, so close as almost to brush him with their wings—
he bolted and reared up—yet even at that disadvantage the practised
rifleman missed not his aim entirely, though he erred somewhat,
and the wound in consequence was not quite deadly.
The ball, which he had meant for the heart, his sight being taken
under the fore-shoulder, was raised and thrown forward by the motion
of the horse, and passed clean through the neck close to the
blade bone. Another leap, wilder and loftier than the last! yet still
the stag dashed onward, with the blood gushing out in streams from
the wide wound, though as yet neither speed nor strength appeared
to be impaired, so fleetly did he scour the meadow.
“He will cross Frank yet!” cried Archer. “Mark! mark him,
Forester!”
But, as he spoke, he set his rifle down against the fence, and
holloaed to the hounds, which instantly, obedient to his well-known
and cheery whoop, broke covert in a body and settled heads up and
sterns down, to the blazing scent.
At the same moment A— came trotting out from his post, gun
in hand; while at a thundering gallop, blaspheming awfully as he
came on, and rating them for “know-nothins, and blunderin' etarnal
spoil-sports,” Tom rounded the farther hill, and spurred across the
level. By this time they were all in sight of Forester, who stood
on foot, close to his horse, in the mouth of the last gorge, the buck
running across him sixty yards off, and quartering a little from him
toward the road; the hounds were, however, all midway between
him and the quarry, and as the ground sloped steeply from the
marksman, he was afraid of firing low—but took a long, and, as it
seemed, sure aim at the head.
The rifle flashed—a tine flew, splintered by the bullet, from the
brow antler, not an inch above the eye.
“Give him the other!” shouted Archer. “Give him the other
barrel!”
But Frank shook his head spitefully, and dropped the muzzle of
his piece.
“By h—ll! then, he's forgot his bullets—and had n't nothen to
load up agen, when he missed the first time!”
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared once again the Commodore—“ha! ha!
hah!—ha! ha!” till rock and mountain rang again.
“By the Etarnal!” exclaimed Draw, perfectly frantic with passion
and excitement—“By thunder! A—, I guess you'd laugh
if your best friends was all a dyin' at your feet. You would for sartain!
But look, look!—what the plague's Harry goin' at?”
For when he saw that Forester had now, for some reason or
other, no farther means of stopping the stag's career, Archer had
set spurs to his horse, and dashed away at a hard furious gallop
after the wounded buck. The hounds, which had lost sight of it as
it leaped a high stone wall with much brush round the base of it,
were running fast and furious on the scent—but still, though flagging
somewhat in his speed, the stag was leaving them. He had
turned, as the last shot struck his horns, down hill, as if to cross
the valley; but immediately, as if perceiving that he had passed
the last of his enemies, turned up again toward the mountain, describing
an arc, almost, in fact, a semicircle, from the point where
he had broken covert to that—another gully, at perhaps a short
mile's distance—from which he was now aiming.
Across the chord, then, of this arc, Harry was driving furiously,
with the intent, as it would seem, to cut him off from the gulley—
the stone wall crossed his line, but not a second did he pause for it,
but gave his horse both spurs, and lifting him a little, landed him
safely at the other side. Frank mounted rapidly, dashed after him,
and soon passed A—, who was less aptly mounted for a chase—
he likewise topped the wall, and disappeared beyond it, though the
stones flew, where the bay struck the coping with his heels.
All pluck to the back-bone, the Commodore craned not nor hesitated,
but dashed the colt, for the first time in his life, at the high
barrier—he tried to stop, but could not, so powerfully did his rider
cram him—leaped short, and tumbled head over heels, carrying
half the wall away with him, and leaving a gap as if a wagon had
passed through it—to Tom's astonishment and agony—for he supposed
the colt destroyed forever.
Scarcely, however, had A— gained his feet, before a sight met
his eyes, which made him leave the colt, and run as fast as his legs
could carry him toward the scene of action.
The stag, seeing his human enemy so near, had strained every
nerve to escape, and Harry, desperately rash and daring, seeing he
could not turn or head him, actually spurred upon him counter to
broadside, in hope to ride him down; foiled once again, in this—
his last hope, as it seemed—he drew his longest knife, and as—a
quarter of a second too late only—he crossed behind the buck, he
swung himself half out of his saddle, and striking a full blow, succeeded
of the master-hand, stumbled and fell upon his head.
Horse, stag, and man, all rolled upon the ground within the compass
of ten yards—the terrified and wounded deer striking out furiously
in all directions—so that it seemed impossible that Archer
could escape some deadly injury—while, to increase the fury and
the peril of the scene, the hounds came up, and added their fresh
fierceness to the fierce confusion. Before, however, A— came
up, Harry had gained his feet, drawn his small knife—the larger
having luckily flown many yards as he fell—and running in behind
the struggling quarry, had seized the brow antler, and at one strong
and skillful blow, severed the weasand and the jugular. One gush
of dark red gore—one plunging effort, and the superb and stately
beast lay motionless forever—while the loud death halloo rang over
the broad valley—all fears, all perils, utterly forgotten in the strong
rapture of that thrilling moment.
| THE OUTLYING STAG. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago | |