“Now, Curtis, bring on your moose.” “Don’t be in a hurry. You don’t want to crowd all your sport into the first day, do you?”
“By no means. I expect to get a moose every day.”
“You mustn’t do it. It’s unlawful for one person to kill more than one moose, two caribou, and three deer in one season.”
“I wouldn’t live in such a stingy State.”
“You may have to some day. Wait until Mississippi has been overrun with greedy hunters, calling themselves sportsmen, from every part of the union, as Maine has, and see if your lawmakers do not wake up to the necessity of protecting the little game they will leave you. If those pot-hunters were let alone, there wouldn’t be anything[345] for a fellow to shoot after a while. Our laws are strict.”
“Are they always obeyed?”
“Of course not. Last winter a party of Indians camped on the headwaters of the Brokenstraw, and killed nearly a hundred moose. When the game-constables got after them, they ran over to Canada. But the worst destroyers of game are the city sportsmen. They shoot at everything that comes within range of their guns, throw away the trout they can’t eat, and the money they pay for food and guides doesn’t begin to cover the damage they do.”
It was a pleasant scene that was spread out before the gaze of Don Gordon and Walter Curtis on that bright September morning. They stood upon the brink of a high bluff jutting out into one of the Seven Ponds, which, at that day, were not as widely known among the class of men whom Walter had just been denouncing as they are at the present time. There was a hotel at the lower pond, but it was patronized only by adventurous sportsmen who, as a rule, lived up to the law, and took no more fish and game than they could dispose of. The men who are willing to endure[346] almost any hardship, who brave all sorts of weather and the miseries of “buck-board” traveling over corduroy roads, for the sake of spending a quiet month in the woods, are not the ones who boast of the number of fish they catch or the amount of game they kill. A hard fight with a three-pound trout, or a single deer brought down after a week’s arduous hunting, affords them more gratification than they would find in a whole creelful of “finger-lings,” or a cart-load of venison killed on the runways.
The boys were in the midst of an almost unbroken wilderness. On their right a noble forest, known only to the hardy lumberman and a few hunters and trappers, stretched away to the confines of Canada. In front was the pond (it was larger than Diamond Lake, whose sluggish waters had once floated a fleet of union gunboats), and from the glade below them on their left arose the smoke of the fire over which some of their companions were cooking a late breakfast. A deep silence brooded over the woods, broken only by an occasional splash made by a trout as he arose to the surface of the pond to seize some unwary insect, and snatches of a plantation melody from[347] Hopkins, who sang as he superintended the frying of the bacon:
“Big fish flutter when he done cotch de cricket;
Bullfrog libely when he singin’ in de thicket;
Mule get slicker when de plantin’ time ober;
Colt mighty gaily when you turn him in de clover;
An’ it come mighty handy to de nigger man nater
When he soppin’ in de gravy wid a big yam ’tater!”
The Southern boys had spent just three days in Dalton, enjoying as much sport as could be crowded into that short space of time. Everybody showed them much attention, and the fathers and mothers of the other members of the club vied with Mr. and Mrs. Curtis in their offers of hospitality. The guests were elected honorary members of the club, and hunting and fishing parties were the order of the day. Don caught his first brook-trout with the little rod whose strength he so much doubted. Bert knocked over a brace or two of ruffed grouse, and one of the club, having heard the visitors say that they didn’t know what a corn-husking was, found a farmer who had some of last year’s crop on hand, and got up one for their especial benefit. There[348] was a large party of people, young and old, assembled in the barn in which the husking was done, and the Southerners, who were not at all bashful or afraid of pretty girls, had any amount of fun over the red ears of which there seemed to be an abundant supply. On Saturday there was glass-ball shooting on the grounds of the club in the presence of invited guests, and although Don Gordon did not succeed in beating the champion, he did some shooting with the rifle that made the club open their eyes. Using Curtis’s Stevens he broke all the spots out of the eight of clubs in eight consecutive shots, shooting off-hand at the distance of fifty feet and using the open sights. This was a feat that no one on the grounds had ever seen accomplished before. Even Curtis, who was the best marksman in the club, couldn’t do it, but he declared he would before he went back to the academy again.
“I tell you plainly that you’ve got a task before you,” said Don. “The best published record is five spots in five shots, using peep sights. This is the best use that can be made of playing cards. I always keep a pack of them on hand, for they are the best kind of targets.”
[349]
And that is all they are good for. If every pack of cards in the world could be shot to pieces as Don’s were, there would be less swindling going on, and we should not see so much misery around us.
Don and his friends made so many agreeable acquaintances in Dalton and so thoroughly enjoyed themselves among them, that they would have been content to pass the whole of their month there; but Curtis would not hear of it. There were only ten days more in September, he said; it would take three of them to reach their camping grounds, and if they desired to see any of the hunting and fishing that were to be found in Maine, they must start at once, for their fine fly-rods would be useless to them after the first of October. The day which closed the time for trout-fishing, opened the season for moose-hunting. If Don had revealed all that was passing in his mind, he would have said that he didn’t care a snap for hunting or fishing either. He had seen a pair of blue eyes and some golden ringlets whose fair owner gazed admiringly at the shoulder-straps he had so worthily won, and who interested him more than all the trout that ever swam or any[350] lordly moose that ever roamed the forests. But he started for the camping-ground when the others did, submitted as patiently as he could to the jolting he was subjected to on the corduroy roads, and wondered what the girl he left behind him would think if she could see him now, dressed in a hunting suit that was decidedly the worse for the hard service it had seen, and wearing a pair of heavy boots, thickly coated with grease, and a slouch hat that had once been gray, but which had been turned to a dingy yellow by the smoke and heat of innumerable camp fires.
Their party had been increased by the addition of five of the members of the rod and gun club, but the lodge which Curtis and some of his friends had erected on the shore of one of the Seven Ponds, and which was modeled after Don Gordon’s shooting-box, was large enough to accommodate them all. It took four wagons to transport them and their luggage to the lodge, at which they arrived on the evening of the third day after leaving Dalton. They were too tired to do much that night, but they were up at the first peep of day, and after their luggage had been transferred from the wagons to the lodge, the beds[351] made up in the bunks, the guns and fishing-rods hung upon the hooks that had been fastened to the walls on purpose to receive them, the canoes put into the water (they had brought three of these handy little crafts with them), a blaze started in the fire-place, the chest that contained their folding-table and camp-chairs unpacked—when these things had been done, the little rustic house, which was a marvel in its way, being constructed of poles instead of boards, began to assume an air of domesticity. The teamsters who brought them to the pond took a hasty bite and departed, leaving the club to themselves. There was no patient, painstaking old cuff with them to cook their meals and act as camp-keeper, and so the young hunters had to do their own work. The first morning the lot fell upon Hopkins and two of the Dalton boys who straightway began preparations for breakfast, while the rest strolled out to look about them, Don and Curtis bringing up on the edge of the bluff where we found them at the beginning of this chapter.
“Lean hoss nicker when de punkin’-vine spreadin’;
Rabbit back his ear when de cabbage-stalk bendin’;
Big owl jolly when de little bird singin’;
[352]
’Possum’s gwine to climb whar de ripe ’simmons swing............