THE FIRST HUNT
BY J. H. WOODBURY.
EPHRAIM BARTLETT’S first hunting adventure was of such a serio-comic nature that it seems really worth relating.
Ephraim’s father was a “selectman.” He had also been a captain of militia in his younger days, and therefore it happened that in speaking of him everybody called him “The Captain.” He bore his honors meekly, was a well-to-do farmer, and very much respected.
It was town-meeting day—early in November,—when, of course the captain had to go to the polls to look after the voting, and help count the votes. It was delightful Indian-summer weather, too; one of the last of those soft hazy days in the late autumn, when there is such a quiet beauty over the earth that it seems of heaven itself. When even the winds forget to blow; and it seems, at times, as if all nature were asleep. Then can be heard, in the edge of the distant forest, the tapping of woodpeckers, the barking of squirrels, and the hoarse cries of blue-jays, so distinctly does every slight sound reach you through the still atmosphere. It was on such a day that the captain and his hired man went to town-meeting, leaving Ephraim “the only man on the farm.”
Now Ephraim had been all the fall longing for a hunt; but his father had not time to go hunting with him, and he thought Ephraim too young to go alone. His father had no objection to his going alone, if he would only go without a gun; but Ephraim could not see the use of hunting without a gun. He longed to get into the woods with his father’s old training gun, all alone. This old piece was rather heavy for sporting purposes; but it was always kept in perfect order, standing in a corner of the captain’s bed-room, behind his desk.
So, after his father was gone, and while his mother was busied about the house, the temptation to take that gun was more than Ephraim could withstand. Watching his opportunity, he first secured the powder-horn and shot-pouch out of the drawer where they were kept, and then he took the musket, and bore it stealthily away behind the barn. He felt in a hurry, and as if he were not doing quite right, and was not quite easy in his mind, even after he had got the gun out of sight. He half resolved to carry it back at once, but finally concluded that he could return it just as well after he had had his hunt, and went to work to load it.
Ephraim was not quite sure how the gun should be loaded; but the powder seemed the most essential thing, so he put a handful of that in first. Then, without any wad between, as there should have been, he put in a handful of shot; and they were large enough, he thought, to kill almost anything. He put a very big wad on top of these, and rammed it hard down with the iron ramrod. It was a flint-lock piece, and he knew that powder would be needed in the pan; so he opened it to put some in. But the pan was already filled; for in ramming down the charge the piece had primed itself.
It was all right, Ephraim felt sure, and, keeping the barn between him and the house, he went towards the wood.
It was a lonely old wood. I often went through it myself when I was a boy, and I know all about it. In the brightest day it would be dark and gloomy under some of those great, wide-spreading, low-branched hemlocks. There were all kinds of wood there that are found in a New England forest; beech, birch, maple, oak, pine, hemlock and chestnut; and partridges, squirrels, rabbits, owls,—in fact, all sorts of small game made it their home.
With the gun on his shoulder Ephraim entered the woods and went trudging straight into it, as if all the game worth shooting were in the middle of it. He could hear the squirrels and blue-jays in the high branches overhead; but it was his first hunt, and he was resolved to have something bigger.
His progress was suddenly arrested, however, by the appearance of a very sedate-looking bird, as large as a good-sized fowl, with a thick muffler of feathers around its throat and shoulders, that sat perched on a dead limb before him. The bird was facing him, and when he stopped it stretched its neck downward, and turned its head to one side as if to listen or observe his movements. Ephraim wondered why it did not fly away, but presently it occurred to him that it was an owl, and could not see him.
“Ah!” thought he, “you are just the fellow I’m looking for! Now just stay where you are a minute, and I’ll fix you!”
He had to find a rest before he could hold his gun steady, and then he was sure to take good aim. But he had to draw so hard on the trigger that he closed his eyes, just as the gun went off; and when he opened them again he was looking another way.
The action of his piece seemed unaccountable. It had started backward so suddenly as to throw him over, and there was a pain in his shoulder as if it had been hit. But he was sure he had killed the owl, and, looking for it, he was again surprised to see it sailing noiselessly away. It seemed in no great haste, and evidently had not started without due reflection. It stopped, before going out of sight, and remained perched on another dry limb, as if waiting for Ephraim to come and shoot it again.
Without reflecting at all as to whether he would be any better off after shooting that owl, or whether it had not just as good a right to live as he, Ephraim sprang up, seeing that there was a chance for another shot, and made all haste to reload his piece.
He put the powder and shot in without any wad between, as before—though not quite so much as at first,—for he thought he had loaded a little too heavy. There was a pain in his shoulder yet, and he did not care to be hit that way again. He rammed the charge down in a great hurry, looked in the pan to see if the priming was all right, and then went softly towards the owl.
When Ephraim got near the owl turned his head first to one side and then to the other, as if he suspected there was a boy in the woods, somewhere; but he did not fly, and, nervous with haste, Ephraim found another rest, and again took good aim.
Strange to say that gun hit him again. He even rolled upon the ground, feeling as if he had got a double allowance of pain. Just as soon as he could think at all, he decided that he wouldn’t fire that gun again. Of course he had killed the owl (a very reasonable supposition, considering how hard the gun had hit him), and he guessed he wouldn’t hunt any more that time.
But when he looked for the owl he didn’t see him anywhere. Could it be that there hadn’t been any owl there? An optical illusion, he might have thought, had he ever heard of such a thing. At any rate there was no owl there. But he noticed something sticking in the limb where he thought the owl had been—and he kept his eyes on it for some time. It looked like the ramrod that belonged to his gun; but how in the world could that be?
He looked at his gun, which was lying on the soft bed of leaves where it had fallen, and then he felt sure it was the ramrod, for it was gone. But how in the world?—He couldn’t understand it—till he happened to think that perhaps he didn’t take the ramrod out after loading.
“Ah! that’s it!” thought he. “But what am I going to do? It’s away up there and I can’t get it!” and then Ephraim began to wish he had left the gun at home. The pain in his shoulder didn’t trouble him much then; his trouble was mostly in his mind, concerning his father and that ramrod. How he could reconcile one to the loss of the other was more than he could tell.
It was a very large tree, without a foot-hold or a finger-hold for a long way up, and the ramrod was stuck in a large dead limb, ten feet out. Ephraim saw at once that he never could get it; and he wished he hadn’t fired that last shot. Possibly he thought the owl was to blame; but whether he did or not there was no help for it. So after awhile he got up, and picked up his gun, and went slowly and sadly towards home.
He had not decided upon any course in particular when he entered the house. It was one of those cases the explanation of which must be left largely to the circumstances of the moment.
His mother met him with the gun in his hand.
“Ephraim!” said she astonished, and too frightened to say more.
“I’ve been hunting, mother,” said Ephraim, very demurely.
“Hunting, my child? Merciful Father!”
“Father didn’t know, it, mother; and I don’t want you to tell him.”
“My son! my son! is the gun loaded?”
“Not now, mother. I fired it off.”
“For pity’s sake, Ephraim! don’t ever take it out again.”
“You won’t tell father, if I won’t take it again, will you, mother?”
“You’ll promise me, Ephraim, that you will never take it again?”
“Yes, mother, if you won’t tell him.”
“Then put it where it belongs,—just as you found it. It’s a wonder you didn’t get hurt.”
Ephraim might have said that he was a little hurt; for he had a sore and swollen shoulder; but he said nothing of that, nor of the ramrod; but he tried to be as good a boy as he could all the rest of the day.
The captain was late home that night, and did not notice anything wrong; but the next day, while at his desk, his eyes fell upon his old training-gun, and he saw that the ramrod was missing. He mused upon it. Where could it be? He never lent that gun; nobody had had it out of the house that he knew of. He went and asked his wife.
Ephraim happened to be with his mother; and when his father asked about the ramrod he looked at her and she looked at him. One or the other of them must let the cat out, but which should it be?
“Do you know anything about the ramrod, Ephraim?” she asked.
“I went a-hunting, father,” said Ephraim, looking down.
“A-hunting? Who—what—when? You have not been shooting that gun, have you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Goodness! Who loaded it?”
“I—did—sir.”
“And fired it off?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you kill anything?”
“I—don’t know,—sir.”
After all, the captain couldn’t help laughing at this point, and as soon as he did Ephraim felt better. He brightened up in a moment, and made the best of his father’s good-nature by telling the whole story at once. He had forgotten to take the ramrod out, he said, and fired it at the owl. He guessed the owl went off to die somewhere, for he didn’t see him again; but the ramrod was up so high he couldn’t get it.
The captain laughed; still, the view he took of the matter was an unpleasantly serious one for Ephraim; who understood that if he should ever take that gun again in his father’s absence the consequences would be direful. The gun was no gun without a ramrod, in his father’s trained eyes, so he at once set out, with Ephraim as guide, and the hired man carrying a ladder, to recover it.
Ephraim led them straight to the tree, and there the ramrod was, still sticking in the limb. But the ladder proved too short, and they had to go back without it. The next day they went again, with the longest ladder on the farm, and got the ramrod and carried it home.
But Ephraim never fired it off again.