senor, you cannot – you do not mean it,” she sobbed, Struggling to be free.
“Do not mean it! Why, sweet one, you do not dream how I love you – how I long for you! Not mean it? Isabel, look in my eyes. Look for yourself.” He laughed low and happily. He was brimming over with hope and gladness, for now at last without a struggle she nestled on his heart.
Despite his grizzled beard old Rawlins was best man when that strange, very quiet, yet very happy wedding came off in the Old Mission Church at Tucson early in the spring. Pedro was not there to give the bride away. With considerable escort and much reluctance he had traversed “Cutthroat Crossing” some months before. He went to Yavapai, and Yavapai – we have his own words for it – was “too damn close to ‘ell.” The rancho passed within the year to other hands. It, too, had taken on another name – a grewsome one —Rancho del Muerto.
A MIGHTY HUNTER BEFORE THE LORD, By Virginius Dabney
FIRST PART
THE man unacquainted with the joys of the chase would be surprised if told, as he sauntered through some city market, that there was far more pleasure in hunting those plump little brown birds hanging in bunches around the stalls than in pursuing that imposing beast whose antlers reach the pavement. Yet it would be true.
Deer hunting under its usual conditions leaves something, often much, to be desired. If a dozen men are placed on isolated “stands” the solitary hours of waiting are long and weary. And should you happen to be a tyro the knowing ones hide you away in some unlikely spot, where hardly by any possibility will the chance come to you of seeing and, in the shivers of “buck ague,” missing the game. “Still hunting,” another mode, is well named. As a rule it may be depended upon to afford no end of stillness, and little else. And to be rowed up by a hired guide on a lake to within a few feet of a poor, helpless buck, swimming for dear life, and blow out his brains is almost as bad as shooting pheasants in an English preserve or poultry in a barnyard. Under all these methods deer hunting lacks what is the conspicuous charm of partridge (quail) shooting – vivid and continuous excitement.
For, from the moment when you enter, on a sparkling autumn morning, a brown stubble field, fresh of limb and eager for the fray, till you limp back at sunset, wolfish for dinner, and broken with a delicious fatigue, you have not had one dull moment. You may not have been firing steadily; the birds may even have been a little scarce; but every instant of the day, as you have watched your dogs sweeping to and fro, you have been buoyed up by an ever lively hope that the next moment your heart will be gladdened by seeing them halt – frozen as it were – in their tracks. Ah, there they are! You hurry up, you and your friend, breathing short. Up bursts the brown covey, with startling buzz! You bang away – innocuously it may be, but no matter, you have made a prodigious noise, at any rate – that’s some comfort. And see now! The little brown balls have dropped into the weeds, one here, one there, along the ditch, and a little bunch, all together, in that clump of briars on the hillside. Better luck next time!
Still, after all, “Bob White,” for all his bustle, is but a small chap. It would take hundreds, nay, bushels of him, to outweigh one “antlered monarch.” Toothsome though he be (on toast) he tips the scales at a beggarly half pound. On the other hand, it often takes you a week or so to get one chance at a deer.
Now, it so happens that it was once my fortune to take part in a deer hunt, where the excitement was as continuous as that in a stubble field, and, naturally, far more intense. This was years ago, and in Scott County, Mississippi, two days’ journey on horseback from our plantation.
Every November, as a child, I had eagerly hailed the return from the camp hunt of the big four-mule wagon, laden with tents, cooking utensils and provisions, and upon which were piled high the noble bucks and sleek does. At last, when I had reached the age of sixteen, the longed-for permission was granted me, and one crisp, frosty morning my father and I mounted our horses and set out for Scott County, followed by Beverly and the great covered wagon. Both Beverly and Ned, his whitish-gray saddle mule, had their peculiarities, as will appear later.
As we journeyed on we were joined at successive cross roads by others of our hunting party, and when we reached the ground we numbered, with those already arrived by other routes, about fifteen. The tents were soon pitched and a roaring fire of logs six feet long was sending up its merry sparks into the starry vault above us. Would supper never be ready?
Meanwhile the tents flashed in the fire light, the ruddy glow of which battled with the hosts of darkness that advanced upon us under cover of the primeval, mysterious forest that surrounded us far and wide. And that forest teeming with deer and wolves. Oh, how delightful! And my Latin grammar miles and miles away! And dust accumulating on my arithmetic!
“Why, where is Billy?”
“Detained by business; he will join us in a day or two.”
“Good! A hunt without Billy Blount is no hunt at all.”
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,
