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.
“I say, Jack, for the Lord’s sake don’t tell the boys!”
After these two days our luck improved, and at the end of the hunt our score reached seventy-eight; the smallest number, by the way, that the club had ever killed. It would hardly be interesting to go into the details of each day’s sport, but our hero’s adventures one night seem worth recording. To this joyous and indefatigable spirit the day was all too short. No sooner had he eaten his supper each day than he began to importune the younger men of the party to join him in a “fire hunt;” but, as they were not Blounts, they felt that a long day in the saddle was enough. In his despair Blount turned to Beverly. That amiable creature, not knowing how to refuse the request of a white gentmun, assented, but with a quaking heart, for were not the surrounding forests swarming with ravenous wolves? He had often lain awake and listened complacently enough to their howling, but to trust, to thrust, himself wantonly among them at dead of night!
“Wid nobody along but Marse Billy Blount, an’ he couldn’t hit nothin’, even by daylight, onless dey asleep. He hear ‘em say wolf ‘fraid o’ fire. Maybe he is. But lights draws dem wild varmints, an’ ‘sposin’ arter a whole congregation un ‘em done come up starin’ at de light; ‘sposin’ somehow or nuther de torch got out – whar Beverly den? Marse Billy got de gun; but whar Beverly? Ain’t I hear people say wolf more ambitiouser for nig-gar dan for sheep meat? Howsomever, ef my own mahster willin’ to resk losin’ of me, I can stand it, I reckon. But Tom, ef you should wake up, and hear something coming through de bresh like a drove o’ steers, you needn’t ax what dat; it’s me and de wolves a-makin’ for camp; an’ me in the lead, wid de help o’ de Laud.” Sitting in front of the blazing logs and chatting with his fellow cooks, Beverly could see the humor of his quite real fears.
Behold, then, the burly knight and his dusky and not over-valiant squire setting forth in quest of adventure – the one mounted on his tall gray, the other astraddle of Ned. It appears incredible that any man in his senses would take two such ani-malson such an expedition, but there never was but one Blount. Beverly carried the gun, his chief the torch, consisting of “lightwood” knots blazing in the bowl of a long-handled frying pan. The handle, resting on the right shoulder, was held somewhat depressed, so that the light should shine above the head of the huntsman, illumining the woods in his front. The sportsman, slowly waving the handle to and fro, peers intently into the darkness in quest of the gleaming eyes of some staring buck.
Presently a dismal howl from far away to the right came stealing through the silence. And presently an answering cry from the left, and much nearer. And another, and another! Ugh! what was that? A rabbit had darted under Ned, across the rattling
