In the Open

The graceful and beautiful wild goose that nests in the Canadian and Northern lakes and marshes, makes his winter home in Tennessee. I think it is the winter wheat that attracts him, as he passes over us, en route to Florida, for wheat is sown in October in Tennessee and by Christmas it is as green as the marsh grasses he left behind in Canada. I do not blame the wild goose for stopping. He has flown for many weary days and nights, over cold and lifeless lands; over mountains brown and sere; over woodlands stripped of leaves and bare and uninviting. All day long the “konk,” “konk” of the leader sounds from the point of the triangle that cuts its ceaseless way through the thin, cold air. Night after night they rest on frozen pond or reedy lake. But one day the air grows sweet and balmy; they look below them at a landscape, which, at their altitude, looks like a mighty lake whose waves are fields of green wheat, broken by islands of dark green hills. It is the Basin of Tennessee. No wonder they come down to earth again. If I were an angel with wings and on my way to heaven by the same route, methinks I’d do the same thing.

“But the wild goose did not always winter here,” said Mr. Adcock, the oldest goose hunter in my town. “I can remember when they first began to come in. I think they began to come in after the country got to be more open and the wheat fields so large that they could alight in the midst of one and the sentinel on guard could see the approach of any hunter. They live to an extreme old age. I know of one flock which winters annually in the Bear Creek neighborhood and has wintered there for forty-two years. The leader of the flock is known to be at least that old. He has a peculiar white mark on his back and is readily recognized each year by the hunters in that section. They propagate very fast in their summer homes, for when this flock left last year it had been reduced to eighteen in number. This year, when it came back, led again by the old gander, it had increased to two hundred and eighty. But I do not think there is a man in that country who would shoot at that old leader with the white mark on him.”

There has always been something peculiarly fascinating to me in the flight of a wild goose or wild duck. I have run up on wild turkeys and seen them in their wild and awkward flight, and while it is beautiful sport to kill a strutting old gobbler who comes to you, allured by your call, and while it is finer sport the next day to sample him when he is baked and browned to a queen’s taste, yet after all he is bred and raised with us, he comes from our woods, not from far distant shores, walks over the earth, does not cleave, like the wild goose, the

—“Pale, purpling evening—”

which in the language of the poet

—“Melts around thy flight.”

And so there is a mystery about himthat, to me, is the mystery of other lands and worlds. There is about him the manner as of one who comes from distant climes; there is the everlasting wonder which to me always hangs around the whistle of wings, the admiration for the creature to whom God has given the power to soar above the sordid things of earth and bathe their plumage in that air which is born of the sunset and the silent stars. And in this connection where, in all language, is there a more beautiful poem of its kind than Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl?” I shall copy it in its entirety here, because it so beautifully expresses what we commoner mortals can only feel.

The High Limestone Bluffs of Duck River.

Whither, midst falling dew,While glow the heavens with the last steps of dayFar, through their rosy depths dost thou pursueThy solitary way?Vainly the fowler’s eyeMight mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,Thy figure floats along.Seekest thou the plashy brinkOf weedy lake, or marge of river wide,Or where the rocking billows rise and sinkOn the chafed ocean side?There is a Power whose careTeaches thy way along that pathless coast—The desert and illimitable air—Lone wanderer, but not lost.All day thy wings have fannedAt that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere.Ye stoop not, weary, to the welcome landThough the dark night is near.And soon that toil shall end,Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bendSoon o’er thy sheltered breast.Thou’rt gone—the abyss of heavenHath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heartDeeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast givenAnd shall not soon depart.He who, from zone to zoneGuides through the boundless sky thy certain flightIn the long way that I must tread aloneWill lead my steps aright.

Whither, midst falling dew,While glow the heavens with the last steps of dayFar, through their rosy depths dost thou pursueThy solitary way?

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day

Far, through their rosy depths dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eyeMight mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,Thy figure floats along.

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seekest thou the plashy brinkOf weedy lake, or marge of river wide,Or where the rocking billows rise and sinkOn the chafed ocean side?

Seekest thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose careTeaches thy way along that pathless coast—The desert and illimitable air—Lone wanderer, but not lost.

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—

The desert and illimitable air—

Lone wanderer, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fannedAt that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere.Ye stoop not, weary, to the welcome landThough the dark night is near.

All day thy wings have fanned

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere.

Ye stoop not, weary, to the welcome land

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bendSoon o’er thy sheltered breast.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o’er thy sheltered breast.

Thou’rt gone—the abyss of heavenHath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heartDeeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast givenAnd shall not soon depart.

Thou’rt gone—the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zoneGuides through the boundless sky thy certain flightIn the long way that I must tread aloneWill lead my steps aright.

He who, from zone to zone

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight

In the long way that I must tread alone

Will lead my steps aright.

For several weeks I had seen the wild geese flying over us. I knew where they were going—to the wheat fields—and I knew where they roosted at night—under the shadow of the bluff of the river, sitting like swans on the dark waters. I hold it of guns as I do of sulkies and road carts—any good make is good enough. It all depends on whom you happen to start in with. If built by honest men, out of honest stuff, there is but little difference in the rest of it. I happen to fancy the Ithaca and had just got me a new one, and for hard, clean, honest shooting, wear and tear, I’ll put it against any of them.

There is only one way to hunt wild geese successfully, and I had prepared all of that; or rather my friend Jno. W. Jackson, assistant postmaster, and the best all-round hunter and fisherman in Tennessee, had—in fact it is part of our stable and belongs in our barn on the rafters, along with the saddle and harness: a strong, light canoe that will hold three people, two big reflecting headlight lanterns that will light up the river from bank to bank, and for very cold weather a good Clark or Lehman heater to drop in the bottom of the canoe and put your feet on if they get cold. Then, with a laprobe over your knees, good gloves and overcoat, and Jimmy Caldwell, who knows every crook and turn of the river for a hundred miles, to paddle it, you are ready for the finest sport on this side the globe. It was just noon when my man, Frank, hooked up the blue roan Chestnut Hal mare to the buckboard. In the rear were my blankets and gun, and oil-cloth to sleep on; also a saddle and bridle. There is something about a blue roan that I always have liked. It reminds me of steel. I have never seen a quitter that was that color. It is remarkable how often the roan horse figures in the living romance of our literature. Who that has ever read it has forgotten the strawberry roan mare of the big-hearted robber in “Lorna Doone”—to my mind as fine a novel as was ever written—a kind of Shakespeare in prose in the wild woods. Do you remember Browning’s “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and the roan that dropped dead but never gave up the race? By the way, there are, in that poem, two of as fine descriptive verses of horses in motion as I ever read:

“At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sunAnd against him the cattle stood black every one,To stare through the mist at us galloping pastAnd I saw my stout galloper, Roland, at last,With resolute shoulders, each butting awayThe haze, as some bluff river headland the spray.And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent backFor my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;And one eye’s black intelligence—ever that glanceO’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!And the thick, heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon,His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on”

“At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun

And against him the cattle stood black every one,

To stare through the mist at us galloping past

And I saw my stout galloper, Roland, at last,

With resolute shoulders, each butting away

The haze, as some bluff river headland the spray.

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;

And one eye’s black intelligence—ever that glance

O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!

And the thick, heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon,

His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on”

I claim that the Hals are the best all-round horses in the world—they are tireless roadsters and jog, at a trot, a good road gait. By half past one I was in Williamsport—twelve miles—and the roan mare had not struck a pace—her fastest gait. After crossing the river and getting into the rough roads over the hills of Hickman County, she climbed them like a mountain goat, for if there is anything a pacer likes it is to chop up his gait for hill work. Not once did she make a misstep. The chief beauty of these hunts, to me, had always been in the fact that I had only to throw a saddle on this mare, after getting to camp, and I had an easy seat all day in our rides over the hills and fields in pursuit of that most delightful of all Southern game—quail. It knocks the sport out of things when you have to take one horse to drive and another to ride, and another to do this, and another that. Rearedfor generations as one of the family, the Hal horse can come very nearly doing everything that his master can, and if this mare had asked me for a toddy before breakfast the next morning I should not have been at all surprised.

Duck River, Where the Wild Geese Roost.As an illustration of the fertility of Middle Tennessee, the field on the right has been in cultivation ninety years, has had no fertilizers except rotation and clover, and produced this year two crops of Irish potatoes of fifty and ninety barrels per acre, respectively.

Duck River, Where the Wild Geese Roost.

As an illustration of the fertility of Middle Tennessee, the field on the right has been in cultivation ninety years, has had no fertilizers except rotation and clover, and produced this year two crops of Irish potatoes of fifty and ninety barrels per acre, respectively.

My destination was the little village of Shady Grove, way up in the foothills, and yet down in a little valley thirty miles from nowhere. We reached it just before sunset, when the smoke began to curl up out of the chimneys for the evening meal, and I stopped on the high hill and looked down on the quiet scene. I have always held that it does a man good to get away from the sound of trade and traffic now and then, and for my part there is nothing that appeals to me so much as to look down on one of these little villages in the hills and speculate on the simple life that exists there. So free from the knockout battles of the modern life, so simple and quiet and wanting so little. There is the school house, yonder the quaint little church which means so much to them and, whether narrow, quaint or clannish, we must admit are the real bulwarks of all the great moral structures that are the strength and pride and glory of twentieth century progress. The little homes cluster around these two. Once a day the mail boy rides over the hills on his pacing horse, with the thoughts of the rest of the world in his leathern pouch. In the twilight I could see that the village blacksmith, a sturdy, handsome young fellow, was forging a horse-shoe. A pretty girl came out of the little postoffice and locked the door. She stopped at the blacksmith’s as she passed and they laughed and made love. Ismiled as I drove on, and said: “This is the glorious twentieth century with all its knowledge and science and progress, and yet when we come to think of it we are right where we were two hundred years ago, for in spite of engines and automobiles the two things that progress must have first of all, before she can move a foot—is a horse-shoe and—love.”

My destination was three miles farther—at Hen Island—but, when I reached it night had set in and, to my astonishment, I saw neither camp nor canoe. It is one hundred miles by river to Hen Island, a fine all-day and all-night float, with plenty of geese and ducks. The canoe had started down with the Old Hunter and Mr. Jackson, the setter dog and the camping outfit, and I expected them to meet me with a full game bag, and to have the camp pitched and supper ready. Instead, I sat alone on the banks of a river, in the chill of a winter’s evening, out in the woods, and with no prospect of anything but the ground to sleep on. I had begun to feel uneasy and dreadfully lonesome, when I noticed a native come down to water the mule he was riding. In answer to my inquiry he said that the Old Hunter had landed there that morning and had tacked a card on the sycamore tree near where I stood. I struck a match and soon deciphered the old man’s peculiar spelling, which told me he had gone on two miles further to camp at a better place.

A camp-fire at night will draw two months’ work and worry out of a man. How grand the trees look in the big, weird flashes of the firelight in front of the tent! The setter dog is at home and welcomes you with his honest bark and playful gambols. You can smell the fine flavor of the boiling coffee (does any other ever taste so good?) a quarter of a mile before you get to it, while the odor that comes up from the “skillet” is enough to bring every wolf out of the woods. In addition to all this the Old Hunter had two barbecued squirrels and, best of all, a mallard which he had cooked in his own inimitable way. That is to say, he had dressed it, all except taking off the feathers. Then he had pasted a wet clay all over it, wrapped it in wet paper and buried it just under the sod of the camp fire. In two hours it was pronounced done, and then he had taken it out, soon after I came up, and with a few hefty touches had peeled the clay and feathers off, with the skin. You may not think this is good until you eat it at camp; then you will not want to eat duck any other way.

The night had grown intensely dark, it seemed to me. The setter was asleep by the camp-fire, the river sang a surly song as it swept by in the blackness and ever and anon the “konk” of a flock of wild geese sounded from out the heavens as if they still flew about, disdaining to go to roost. In my vanity I supposed that they had heard that I had arrived and so concluded it was best to spend the night in the air.

We did not wish to start until nearly midnight and as we sat around the fire the Old Hunter grew mellow and reminiscent and this was one of the funny stories he told me.

“Talk about horses breakin’ the record, an’ all that, but do you kno’ that in my young days I broke all the records that ever was an’ ever will be, s’fur as a pacin’ hoss is concerned? Whut’s Star Pointer’s time?” he asked.

I told him.

He grunted doubtfully. “Wal, I think I was sixteen an’ about as hefty a lad as ever plowed a furrer. Lemme see; I was either sixteen or it was the year my daddy was the proud father of his sixteenth child, I’ve forgotten which; but I had to work like an ox all week plowin’ in the new ground an’ gettin’ out stumps an’ all that, an’ if there was a boy or man in that settlement that could beat me breakin’ in a colt or hold a hand with me in a wrestlin’ match, I don’t remember it jis’ now. We had one holiday an’ that was Sunday afternoons, which we spent mostly in breakin’ in of colts. Wal, one Sunday we struck the meanest-tempered colt that ever come down the pike. He flung Bill, an’ he flung Jim, an’ then he flung the old man hisse’f. They was all older than me, of course, an’when he flung the old man it made him bilin’ hot an’ he sez: ‘Dam sech a colt es that! I’ll give ennybody a dollar that will stay on his back a minnit!’

“Then I up an’ sez to the old man: ‘Pap, do you mean that?’

“‘I do,’ sez he, most emphatically.

“‘Then,’ sez I, ‘that dollar is mine.’

“Now, in them days colts wan’t broke till they was fo’ years old, an’ this particular colt had been raised with the mules in the cane bottoms. I got Bill to hold him with a twister till I got on, an’ they turned him loose. He give three buckjumps, one right after the other, but I had locked my long legs around him, and he might as well have tried to throw off the saddle. When he saw he couldn’t fling me he bolted an’ took up the pike like wild. He run under trees an’ through bushes, he jumped rock fences, he scraped trees and jumped ditches, an’ I let him go. He run up the road five miles to Blivens’ mill, then he got skeered at a goat in the road, bolted ag’in and run back home. I calk’lated he run jes’ ten miles back to the barn lot he started frum, an’ when he cleared the last fence I turned loose my grip an’ turned a summerset over his head in ten yards of whar we started. I was sorter dazed at first, but when I came to the old man was standin’ over me sorter smilin’ an’ he sed: ‘Hiram, my son, here’s yo’ dollar; you’ve been on just a minnit!’”

It was nearly midnight when the big lamps were lighted. They were placed on the prow of the canoe, so that their rays crossed in the river, each lamp lighting its opposite side. I knew that the old hunter knew every shoal and log in the river and that no man could guide a boat or shoot quicker or more accurately than John Jackson. So I had no fears of capsizing, and when I took my Ithaca and sat down behind the lights, I was in such a glow of excitement that I did not need my overcoat. And that excitement never left me. The boat glided out and a weird and yet fascinating scene presented itself. We sat in midnight darkness, but for fifty yards ahead of us the river was bright with the glare of the big reflectors. It penetrated the woods on either side and I felt something awesome in the feeling that we were uncovering the hidden secrets of nature, peering into the midnight heart, laying bare her shrouded woods and dark waters and stabbing her silence and her solitude with a knife of light.

Not a word was to be spoken. Everything went by a code of signals. If Jackson put out his right hand, the boat moved to the right—his left hand, to the left. One’s heart beats fast and the blood runs hot, for as he peers into the midnight darkness and sees the white light creeping over the woods and the waters, he expects every minute to see the graceful necks and white outspread banners of a flock of geese fall into its penetrating circle.

There was a splash in the water to the left. It was a beaver. A swift object moved across the prow of the canoe, cutting the water into ripples as it hurried to the shore. It was a muskrat. A half mile farther I almost laughed out at the queer antics of Br’er Coon when the big lights caught him square in the eyes as he sat fishing for earth worms on the bank. He blinked, and winked, and turned his head in a quizzical way as if wondering what that animal with the sun-eyes was floating down the stream. We left him standing on the bank winking, and blinking, and too worthless for us to startle our game with an unnecessary report.

It is the unexpected, of course, that happens, and it came a half-mile farther down and out the top of a dead tree lying in the river. They arose with a whirr and whistle of wings and clatter, almost under our prow, that I scarcely had time to prepare. Besides, in the light they appeared pure white and of great size. Instead of flying away they flew straight at our lights, for they were blinded, and the Old Hunter said I dodged to keep from being hit. Anyway, I managed to fire once as they passed over me. Then I heard the old man’s gun roar in my ears and two big mallards fell almost in our boat.

“Did I hit anything?” I asked him.

He laughed.

“You shot all the tail feathers out of the duck I killed!” he said. “Phe—w—! listen! Throw the oil cloth over the lights,” he whispered.

I did, and we sat in the middle of the river in pitch darkness. Our shots had flushed a big flock of geese. They made a tremendous clatter as they arose from the waters, not two hundred yards ahead of us. They were flying wildly about down the river.

“That’s unlucky,” said the old hunter. “In a few minutes we would have had them.”

It was an hour before we had them again—at least twenty beautiful fellows that flashed into our circle of light. The sight of a flock of geese on the water at night is the most beautiful and thrilling sight I ever saw. In the air they are long-necked, awkward things, but in the water they are the personification of grace and beauty. They ride the waves like a swan, their necks grandly arched and the big band of white under their tails is raised and spread like a white banner in the light. At sight of these not a word was said, as the old hunter moved silently up to them and began the process called huddling them. It took us five minutes to do this, and all the time I sat with my gun on them and my heart thumping like a racer’s in the back stretch. At last three heads crossed in a line. I saw Jackson’s gun in front of me leap to his shoulder, and I fired. They arose with konks and screams and for half a minute every gun turned on them in the air. Then silence and darkness, for the suction of the discharges had put out our lights... And then!—well, we merely fell out of the canoe! for just in the shadow of our lights a flock arose with a noise and splash that set the boat rocking on the waves.

“Bad luck again,” said the old hunter, as he rowed up to and picked up the eight beauties. “We run into the sentry. We’d killed a dozen if we’d only waited.”

“Yes,” I said, while a thrill of genuine sportsman joy tingled me to the fingers; “but one doesn’t want to be a hog! This is enough for one night. Let’s go back to camp.”

TROTWOOD.

By JOHN HENRY WALLACE, JR.

’Twas the Christmas season and the air was soft and balmy, sweet with the fragrance of the soft southerly winds.

The next day, much to our delight, promised to dawn bright and clear. Colonel Malcolm Gilchrist, of Courtland, and Major Otis Hennigan, of Leighton, had done me the honor to be my guests at “Kittikaskia,” my home, and to bring along their superb packs of hounds, it being our intention to go in quest of “Old Blaze,” a big red fox that lived in the Jarman fields four miles to the west. This crafty red had for several years eluded hunters and hounds by seeking refuge in the caves of the Tennessee River hills, but we had planned for the morrow a scheme to change his course, and to put him on his mettle to outstrip the hounds, or else succumb in the brave attempt.

“Old Blaze” always ran through the same stand on his unerring way to the river hills, and so, in anticipation of this, we had secured half a hundred dusky denizens of the cotton fields to go to his crossing, form a line, and yell after the lusty manner of their kind, when they heard the hounds coming. We believed that the bedlam they would raise would divert the fox from his beaten track, and turn him toward a level, open country, where the chase could be followed with ease, seen and enjoyed.

It was an eager anticipation of sport most glorious that infused our hearts with happiness as we donned our hunting regalia that eventful morn.

The South is the natural home of the true fox hunter. The lords and ladies of the British Isles who came to this country settled along the Atlantic Coast. And as westward the star of empire wended its unrelenting way, their posterity cut through the forest and founded here a happy, a peaceful and a prosperous land—where oftentimes one man’s estate rivals in area and grandeur a modern principality. Descended from these grandees who brought to America the best strains of race horses, hounds and gamecocks, the sport-loving fraternityof Dixieland still retain in their pristine purity the same strains their noble ancestors Imported and loved.

The Southern fox-hunter loves his hounds. He enjoys seeing the individuals of his pack race together. And we were to see tested the speed and endurance of the prides of our respective packs—Colonel Gilchrist’s “Fashion,” Major Hennigan’s “Prompter,” and the writer’s “Alice.” Three faster and gamer hounds were never before matched in Alabama (and the fastest and gamest hounds on earth are here), and the coming struggle for victory was intensified most thrillingly by our natural love for the hunt.

As we rode toward the foxes’ rendezvous, o’er the distant hills frolicked the resonant tones of the hunter’s horn, its plaintive notes awakening the sleeping echoes that set the woodland dells ringing with the sweetest of mellow music.

The shafts of the new-born day quivered high in the heavens, as the stars one by one paled of silvery lustre as the sun kindled the eastern forests with flames that swept and glowed away the dawn. The hunters were splendidly mounted, and their horses bounded away with a spirit that thrilled the hearts of the riders, for oft before had they been ridden in the chase, and each horse seemed instinctively to know that excellent sport was ahead. The frost sparkled on the Bermuda, bespangling it with tiny icy prisms, while not a cloud in the heavens marred the perfect glory of an ideal hunting morn.

The hounds were held in check until the vicinity of the foxes’ lair had been reached, when the hunting signals were given to forty fearless hounds that eagerly bounded away to search field and fell for traces of Sir Reynard. The course was directed up the ivy-bedecked banks of Kittikaskia, whose clear waters flow into those of the murkier Tennessee. Soon the course was changed toward the Jarman fields and “Morgan,” the Nestor of the packs, sounded the first tocsin of game. Singly, and in pairs, the hounds chimed in, for they knew that Morgan never cried a false track, and all confidently and diligently worked to solve the problem of a very cold and indifferent scent. Now all the hounds join in, the scent grows warmer, and Prompter has given tongue. When he cries the trail, the fox is sure to be rousted.

Then, like the notes of a single instrument swelling into the magnificent crescendo of a grand orchestra, the hounds jumped the fox from his mossy lair and sped away in swift pursuit, filling the hills and hollows with music, wild yet thrillingly in tune. Fond of detouring the level fields before his jaunt to the river hills, and proud of his fleetness of foot, the spirited red began an elaborate journey by leaving the woods and swinging out into the plantations, now vocal with the anthems of the happy darkies, whose sweet songs of contentment are cadences to the time to which they gather the snowy cotton.

We rode to the yelping pack, each steed seeming eager to outstrip the field. With nostrils red, steaming and distended, eyes dilated and flashing wicked fire, they bear their riders to the density of the thickening cry. The world seems vibrant with the music of the cascades of glorious enthusiasm, and hunters are oblivious to all save the inspiration of the matchless moment. We are now within easy view of the running pack, that dashed high into the air the melting frost which descended like a shower of diamond sparks, while Alice—game little hound, her wild-goose notes pealing out far above the unbroken cry—led the pack at a killing pace. Fashion was at her flank, with Prompter not a length behind, and across the valley’s fertile expanse the race for victory began.

“Go on, Fashion!” yelled Colonel Gilchrist, tiptoeing in his stirrups, his hat off. She heard and heeded his shout of encouragement and gradually lessened the lead of Alice. But Alice, long an invincible leader, was not to be vanquished without a desperate struggle. The main pack was spread out like an open fan. A blanket could have covered the thirty-seven demons that raced together to be the first to cry the burning scent that crazes the brains of the hounds, andconverts them into yelping, frenzied fiends.

The fox and hounds entered a strip of woods and for the moment are lost to view. A meadow was being crossed and Fashion, like a dart from an Indian’s ashen bow, flashed up to Alice, and Colonel Gilchrist set up a yell that seemed to split the azure dome of the sky. Prompter had fallen back and was running with the pack. The course of the fox was now directed towards the river. The chase was one hour old, and hard pressed in open country, he would seek refuge in the crags and cliffs that overhang the beautiful, the picturesque, the turbulent Mussel Shoals.

“Follow me and see the fox!” I shouted, and dashed away, followed by the other hunters to a stand where the fox was sure to cross. We reached the place not a moment too soon, for Sir Reynard, with long, poetic leaps, came splitting down the vale. His head was held defiantly in the air, his handsome amber brush was carried proudly high. Like a red streak he flashed into the woods and was lost to view in its density. The hunters remained silent until the hounds had passed. They were heard coming fast behind, like a maddened musical avalanche, with Alice leading Fashion by several lengths. While Fashion continued the valiant fight for supremacy, her slender black neck, ringed with white, elevated, her shapely head was thrown back like the antlers of a frightened deer, dashing from the hunter’s snare to sweet security. All the hounds but Scott’s were well packed.

Away speed the hunters! Faster fly the hounds.

At once there arose so wild a yell,

“As if all the fiends from heaven that fellHad pealed the banner cry of hell.”

“As if all the fiends from heaven that fell

Had pealed the banner cry of hell.”

The fox was approaching the crossing to the river. The negroes on guard had heard the hounds coming and were endeavoring to turn him back.

Old Blaze was terrified at the outcry, and swerved to the right and sought safety by endeavoring to show to the pack a burst of speed that would soon place him so far ahead as to leave behind only a very cold trail. But the hounds were equal to the emergency, and turned with the fox without a momentary bobble, and back to the Jarman fields proceeded the electrifying march, “full cry” being rendered by the grandest of musicians, whose music has inspired kings and peasants alike, infused them with nobler ambitions and attuned their hearts and primed their souls to the songs caroled by angel voices. Prompter has left the pack and now challenges Alice and Fashion. It becomes indeed a killing race for victory.

The chase is now two hours old. The fox found that he could not outstrip the pack. His revengeful pursuers could not be evaded by swift running tactics, for the air was damp and still, and he left behind him a scorching trail. One hope only now remained for him—he must make for the river hills, or else succumb. The fox on his circle back toward the river ran two miles west of where he had formerly tried to cross, and ere long the chase was on the bluff overlooking the river, whose broad expanse was dotted here and there with islets that seemed to float like graceful gondolas of green, and each echoed the notes of the hounds and, altogether, sounded like a hundred packs running in the river. Alice still maintained the lead. As the hounds dashed down a steep declivity, in sight of all, she is seen to strike her shoulder against a cruel projecting rock that causes her to tumble. She quickly got up and made an effort to follow the track, but her shoulder refuses to respond to her will and her foot hangs limp—her shoulder was broken. On three legs she follows far behind, crying the scent.

I hastily dismounted and caught her in my arms, giving rein to my mount. I was determined that she should see the finish, she who was so unfortunately deterred from brilliantly winning.

It is two miles to where the fox intends to go to earth. Fashion is crying the lead not sixty yards behind the quarry. The pack, with flaming tongues, is just behind, giving vent to short, defiant yelps. My horse is intensely excited and determined to outstrip the hunting field.

Ho! hear that defiant, agonized cry!

It is a sight race!

The hounds see the fox. His requiem is being sounded at every note. The fox is within a few hundred yards of his place of safety. The hounds seem to know it, and are running with an inspiration that means death to the fox. Little Alice in my arms cried pitifully and struggled tenaciously to be released, that she might endeavor to go to the vortex of the revengeful cry.

The hounds are closing in on the fox, and the splendid red turns toward his frantic pursuers, and rushes into the steel-hinged jaws of Fashion, meeting death as only the courageous die—facing it without a murmur. Prompter is the next hound to catch the fox, and soon his destruction is complete. In the midst of great delight, there is passing regret, for we deplore the fact that a creature so graceful, so noble, so courageous should forfeit his life after the splendid sport he had afforded us on that grand December morning.

Huntsville, Ala.

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