Luncheon was soon discussed, a noble cold quail pie and a spiced round of beef, which formed the most essential parts thereof, displaying in their rapidly diminished bulk ocular evidence of the extent of sportmen's appetites; a single glass of shrub and water followed, cheroots were lighted, and forth the comrades sallied, the Commodore inquiring as they went what were the prospects of success.
"You fellows," he concluded, "have, I suppose, swept the ground completely."
"That you shall see directly," answered Archer; "I shall make you no promises. But see how evidently Grouse recollects those dogs of mine, though it is nearly a year since they have met; don't you think so, A---?"
"To be sure I do," replied the Commodore; "I saw it the first moment you came up--had they been strangers he would have tackled them upon the instant; and instead of that he began wagging his tail, and wriggling about, and playing with them. Oh! depend upon it, dogs think, and remember, and reflect far more than we imagine--"
"Oh! run back, Timothy--run back!" here Archer interrupted him--"we don't want you this afternoon. Harness the nags and pack the wagon, and put them to, at five--we shall be at home by then, for we intend to be at Tom's to-night. Now look out, Frank, those three last quail we marked in from the hill dropped in the next field, where the ragwort stands so thick; and five to one, as there is a thin growth of brushwood all down this wall side, they will have run down hither. Why, man alive! you've got no copper caps on!"
"By George! no more I have--I took them off when I laid down my gun in the house, and forgot to replace them."
"And a very dangerous thing you did in taking them off, permit me to assure you. Any one but a fool, or a very young child, knows at once that a gun with caps on is loaded. You leave yours on the table without caps, and in comes some meddling chap or other, puts on one to try the locks, or to frighten his sweetheart, or for some other no less sapient purpose, and off it goes! and if it kill no one, it's God's mercy! Never do that again, Frank!"
Meanwhile they had arrived within ten yards of the low rickety stone wall, skirted by a thin fringe of saplings, in which Archer expected to find game--Grouse, never in what might be called exact command, had disappeared beyond it.
"Hold up, good dogs!" cried Harry, and as he spoke away went Shot and Chase--the red dog, some three yards ahead, jumped on the wall, and, in the act of bounding over it, saw Grouse at point beyond. Rigid as stone he stood upon that tottering ridge, one hind foot drawn up in the act of pointing, for both the fore were occupied in clinging to some trivial inequalities of the rough coping, his feathery flag erect, his black eye fixed, and his lip slavering; for so hot was the scent that it reached his exquisitely fashioned organs, though Grouse was many feet advanced between him and the game. Shot backed at the wall-foot, seeing the red dog only, and utterly unconscious that the pointer had made the game beyond.
"By Jove! but that is beautiful!" exclaimed the Commodore. "That is a perfect picture!--the very perfection of steadiness and breaking."
They crossed the wall, and poor Shot, in the rear, saw them no more; his instinct strongly, aye! naturally, tempted him to break in, but second nature, in the shape of discipline, prevailed; and, though he trembled with excitement, he moved not an inch. Grouse was as firm as iron, his nose within six inches of a bunch of wintergreen, pointed directly downward, and his head cocked a little on one side--they stepped up to him, and still on the wall-top, Chase held to his uneasy attitude.
"Now, then," said Harry, "look out, till I kick him up."
No sooner said than done--the toe of his thick shooting-boot crushed the slight evergreen, and out whirred, with his white chaps and speckled breast conspicuous, an old cock quail. He rose to Forester, but ere that worthy had even cocked his gun--for he had now adopted Archer's plan, and carried his piece always at half cock, till needed--flew to the right across the Commodore; so Frank released his hammer and brought down his Manton, while A--- deliberately covered, and handsomely cut down the bird at five-and-twenty yards.
Grouse made a movement to run in, but came back instantly when called.
"Just look back, if you please, one moment, before loading," said Harry, "for that down-charge is well worth looking at."
And so indeed it was--for there, upon the wall-top, where he had been balancing, Chase had contrived to lie down at the gunshot--wagging his stern slightly to and fro, with his white forepaws hanging down, and his head couched between them, his haunches propped up on the coping stone, and his whole attitude apparently untenable for half a minute.
"Now, load away for pity's sake, as quickly as you can; that posture must be any thing but pleasant."
This was soon done; inasmuch as the Commodore is not exactly one to dally in such matters; and when his locks ticked, as he drew the hammers to half-cock, Chase quietly dismounted from his perch, and Shot's head and fore-paws appeared above the barrier; but not till Archer's hand gave the expected signal did the stanch brutes move on.
"Come, Shot, good dog--it is but fair you should have some part of the fun! Seek dead! seek dead! that's it, sir! Toho! steady! Fetch him, good lad! Well done!"
In a few minutes' space, four or five more birds came to bag--they had run, at the near report, up the wall side among the bushes, and the dogs footed them along it, now one and now another taking the lead successively, but without any eagerness or raking looking round constantly, each to observe his comrades' or his master's movements, and pointing slightly, but not steadily, at every foot, till at the last all three, in different places, stood almost simultaneously--all three dead points.
One bird jumped up to Frank, which he knocked over. A double shot fell to the Commodore, who held the centre of the line, and dropped both cleverly--the second, a long shot, wing-tipped only. Harry flushed three and killed two dean, both within thirty paces, and then covered the third bird with his empty barrels--but, though no shot could follow from that quarter, he was not to escape scot free, for wheeling short to the left hand, and flying high, he crossed the Commodore in easy distance, and afterward gave Forester a chance.
"Try him, Frank," halloaed Archer--and "It's no use!" cried A---, almost together, just as he raised his gun, and levelled it a good two feet before the quail.
But it was use, and Harry's practiced eye had judged the distance more correctly than the short sight of the Commodore permitted--the bird quailed instantly as the shot struck, but flew on notwithstanding, slanting down wind, however, towards the ground, and falling on the hill-side at a full hundred yards.
"We shall not get him," Forester exclaimed; "and I am sorry for it, since it was a good shot."
"A right good shot," responded Harry, "and we shall get him. He fell quite dead; I saw him bounce up, like a ball, when he struck the hard ground. But A---'s second bird is only wing-tipped, and I don't think we shall get him; for the ground where he fell is very tussockky and full of grass, and if he creeps in, as they mostly will do, into some hole in the bog-ground, it is ten to one against the best dog in America!"
And so it came to pass, for they did bag Forester's, and all the other quail except the Commodore's which, though the dogs trailed him well, and worked like Trojans, they could not for their lives make out.
After this little rally they went down to the alders by the stream-side, and had enough to do, till it was growing rapidly too dark to shoot--for the woodcock were very plentiful--it was sweet ground, too, not for feeding only, but for lying, and that, as Harry pointed out, is a great thing in the autumn.
The grass was short and still rich under foot, although it froze hard every night; but all along the brook's marge there were many small oozy bubbling springlets, which it required a stinging night to congeal; and round these the ground was poached up by the cattle, and laid bare in spots of deep, soft, black loam; and the innumerable chalkings told the experienced eye at half a glance, that, where they laid up for the night soever, here was their feeding ground, and here it had been through the autumn.
But this was not all, for at every ten or twenty paces was a dense tuft of willow bushes, growing for the most part upon the higher knolls where it was dry and sunny, their roots heaped round with drift wood, from the decay of which had shot up a dense tangled growth of cat-briers. In these the birds were lying, all but some five or six which had run out to feed, and were flushed, fat and large, and lazy, quite in the open meadow.
"They stay here later," Harry said, as they bagged the last bird, which, be it observed, was the twenty-seventh, "than any where I know. Here I have killed them when there was ice thicker than a dollar on all the waters round about, and when you might see a thin and smoke-like mist boiling up from each springlet. Kill them all off to-day, and you will find a dozen fresh birds here to-morrow, and so on for a fortnight--they come down from the high ground as it gets too cold for them to endure their high and rarified atmosphere, and congregate hither!"
"And why not more in number at a time?" asked A---.
"Ay! there we are in the dark--we do not know sufficiently the habits of the bird to speak with certainty. I do not think they are pugnacious, and yet you never find more on a feeding ground than it will well accommodate for many days, nay weeks, together. One might imagine that their migrations would be made en masse, that all the birds upon these neighboring hills would crowd down to this spot together, and feed here till it was exhausted, and then on--but this is not so! I know fifty small spots like this, each a sure find in the summer for three or four broods, say from eight to twelve birds. During the summer, when you have killed the first lot, no more return--but the moment the frost begins, there you will find them--never exceeding the original eight or ten in number, but keeping up continually to that mark--and whether you kill none at all, or thirty birds a week, there you will always find about that number, and in no case any more. Those that are killed off are supplied, within two days at farthest, by new comers; yet, so far as I can judge, the original birds, if not killed, hold their own, unmolested by intruders. Whence the supplies come in--for they must be near neighbors by the rapidity of their succession--and why they abstain from their favorite grounds in worse locations, remains, and I fear we must remain, in the dark. All the habits of the woodcock are, indeed, very partially and slightly understood. They arrive here, and breed early in the spring--sometimes, indeed, before the snow is off the hills--get their young off in June, and with their young are most unmercifully, most unsportsmanly, thinned off, when they can hardly fly--such is the error, as I think it, of the law--but I could not convince my stanch friends, Philo, and J. Cypress, Jr., of the fact, when they bestirred themselves in favor of the progeny of their especial favorites, perdix virginiana and tetrao umbellus, and did defer the times for slaying them legitimately to such a period, that it is in fact next to impossible to kill the latter bird at all. But vainly did I plead, and a false advocate was Cypress after all, despite his nominal friendship, for that unhappy Scolopax, who in July at least deserves his nickname minor, or the infant. For, setting joke apart, what a burning shame it is to murder the poor little half-fledged younglings in July, when they will scarcely weigh six ounces; when they will drop again within ten paces of the dog that flushes, or the gun that misses them; and when the heat will not allow you even to enjoy the consummation of their slaughter. Look at these fellows now, with their gray foreheads, their plump ruddy breasts, their strong, well-feathered pinions, each one ten ounces at the least. Think how these jolly old cocks tower away, with their shrill whistle, through the tree-tops, and twist and dodge with an agility of wing and thought-like speed, scarcely inferior to the snipe's or swallow's, and fly a half mile if you miss them; and laugh to scorn the efforts of any one to bag them, who is not an out-and-outer! No chance shot, no stray pellet speaks for these--it must be the charge, the whole charge, and nothing but the charge, which will cut down the grown bird of October! The law should have said woodcock thou shalt not kill until September; quail thou shalt not kill till October, the twenty-fifth if you please; partridge thou shalt kill in all places, and at all times, when thou canst! and that, as we know, Frank, and A---, that is not everywhere or often."
"But, seriously," said the Commodore, "seriously, would you indeed abolish summer shooting?"
"Most seriously! most solemnly I would!" Archer responded. "In the first place because, as I have said, it is a perfect sin to shoot cock in July; and secondly, because no one would, I am convinced, shoot for his own pleasure at that season, if it were not a question of now or never. Between the intense heat, and the swarms of mosquitoes, and the unfitness of that season for the dogs, which can rarely scent their game half the proper distance, and the density of the leafy coverts; and lastly, the difficulty of keeping the game fresh till you can use it, render July shooting a toil, in my opinion, rather than a real pleasure; although we are such hunting creatures, that rather than not have our prey at all, we will pursue it in all times, and through all inconveniences. Fancy, my dear fellows, only fancy what superb shooting we should have if not a bird were killed till they were all full grown, and fit to kill; fancy bagging a hundred and twenty-five fall woodcock in a single autumn day, as we did this very year on a summer's day!"
"Oh! I agree with you completely," said Frank Forester, "but I am afraid such a law will never be brought to bear in this country--the very day on which cock shooting does not really begin, but is supposed by nine tenths of the people to begin--the fourth of July is against it.* [*In the State of New York close time for woodcock expires on the last day of June--in New Jersey on the fourth of July--leaving the bird lawful prey on the 1st and the 5th, respectively.] Moreover, the amateur killers of game are so very few, in comparison with the amateur eaters thereof, that it is all but impossible to enforce the laws at all upon this subject. Woodcock even now are eaten in June--nay, I have heard, and believe it to be true, that many hotels in New York serve them up even in March and April; quail, this autumn, have been sold openly in the markets, many days previous to the expiration of close time. And, in fact, sorry I am to say it, as far as eating-houses are in question, the game laws are nearly a dead letter.
"In the country, also, I have universally found it to be the case, that although the penalty of a breach may be exacted from strangers, no farmer will differ with a neighbor, as they call it, for the sake of a bird. Whether time, and a greater diffusion of sporting propensities, and sporting feelings, may alter this for the better or no, I leave to sager and more politic pates than mine. And now I say, Harry, you surely do not intend to trundle us off to Tom Draw's to-night without a drink at starting? I see Timothy has got the drag up to the door, and the horses harnessed, and all ready for a start."
"Yes! yes! all that's true," answered Harry, "but take my word for it, the liquor case is not put in yet. Well, Timothy," he went on, as they reached the door, "that is right. Have you got everything put up?"
"All but t' gam' bag and t' liquor ca-ase, sur," Tim replied, touching his hat gnostically as he spoke; "Ay reckoned ple-ease sur, 'at you'd maybe want to fill t' yan oop, and empty t' oother!"
"Very well thought, indeed!" said Archer, winking to Forester the while. "Let that boy stand a few minutes to the horses' heads, and come into the house yourself and pack the birds up, and fetch us some water."
"T' watter is upon t' table, sur, and t' cigars, and a loight; but Ay'se be in wi' you directly. Coom hither, lad till Ay shew thee hoo to guide 'em; thou munna tooch t' bits for the loife o' thee, but joost stan' there anent them--if they stir loike, joost speak to 'em--Ayse hear thee!" and he left his charge and entered the small parlor, where the three friends were now assembled, with a cheroot apiece already lighted, and three tall brimming rummers on the table.
"Look sharp and put the birds up," said Harry, pitching, as he spoke, the fine fat fellows right and left out of his wide game pockets, "and when that's done fill yourself out a drink, and help us on with our great coats."
"What are you going to do with the guns?" inquired the Commodore.
"To carry them uncased and loaded; substituting in my own two buckshot cartridges for loose shot," replied Archer. "The Irish are playing the very devil through this part of the country--we are close to the line of the great Erie railroad--and they are murdering, and robbing, and I know not what, for miles around. The last time I was at old Tom's he told me that but ten days or a fortnight previously a poor Irish woman, who lived in his village, started to pay a visit to her mother by the self same road we shall pass to-night; and was found the next morning with her person brutally abused, kneeling against a fence stone dead, strangled with her own cambric handkerchief. He says, too, that not a week passes but some of them are found dead in the meadows, or in the ditches, killed in some lawless fray; and no one ever dreams of taking any notice, or making any inquiry about the matter!"
"Is it possible? then keep the guns at hand by all means!"
"Yes! but this time we will violate my rule about the copper caps--there is no rule, you are aware, but what has some exception--and the exception to this of mine is, always take off your copper caps before getting into a wagon; the jar will occasionally explode them, an upset will undoubtedly. So uncap, Messrs. Forester and A---, and put the bright little exploders into your pockets, where they will be both safe and handy! And now, birds are in, drinks are in, dogs and guns are in, and now let us be off!"
No more words were wasted; the landlord's bill was paid, Frank Forester and Timothy got up behind, the Commodore took the front seat, Harry sprang, reins in hand, to the box, and off they bowled, with lamps and cigars burning merrily, for it was now quite dark, along the well-known mountain road, which Archer boasted he could drive as safely in the most gloomy night of winter as in a summer noon. And so it proved this time, for though he piloted his horses with a cool head and delicate finger through every sort of difficulty that a road can offer, up long and toilsome hills without a rail between the narrow track and the deep precipice, down sharp and stony pitches, over loose clattering bridges, along wet marshy levels, he never seemed in doubt or trouble for a moment, but talked and laughed away, as if he were a mere spectator.
After they had gone a few miles on their way--"you broke off short, Archer," said the Commodore, "in the middle of your dissertation on the natural history and habits of the woodcock, turning a propos des bottes to the cruelty of killing them in midsummer. In all which, by the way, I quite agree with you. But I don't want to lose the rest of your lucubrations on this most interesting topic. What do you think becomes of the birds in August, after the moult begins?"
"Verily, Commodore, that is a positive poser. Many good sportsmen believe that they remain where they were before; getting into the thickest and wettest brakes, refusing to rise before the dog, and giving out little or no scent!"
"Do you believe this?"
"No; I believe there is a brief migration, but whither I cannot tell you with any certainty. Some birds do stay, as they assert; and that a few do stay, and do give out enough scent to enable dogs to find them, is a proof to me that all do not. A good sportsman can always find a few birds even during the moult, and I do not think that birds killed at that time are at all worse eating than others. But I am satisfied that the great bulk shift their quarters, whither I have not yet fully ascertained; but I believe to the small runnels and deep swales which are found throughout all the mountain tracts of the middle States; and in these, as I believe, they remain dispersed and scattered in such small parties that they are not worth looking after, till the frost drives them down to their old haunts. A gentleman, whom I can depend on, told me once that he climbed Bull Hill one year late in September--Bull Hill is one of the loftiest peaks in the Highlands of the Hudson--merely to show the prospect to a friend, and he found all the brushwood on the summit full of fine autumn cock, not a bird having been seen for weeks in the low woodlands at the base. They had no guns with them at the time, and some days elapsed before he could again spare a few hours to hunt them up; in the meantime frost came, the birds returned to their accustomed swamps and levels, and, when he did again scale the rough mountain, not a bird rewarded his trouble. This, if true, which I do not doubt, would go far to prove my theory correct; but it is not easy to arrive at absolute certainty, for if I am right, during that period birds are to be found no where in abundance, and a man must be a downright Audubon to be willing to go mountain-stalking--the hardest walking in the world, by the way--purely for the sake of learning the habits of friend Scolopax, with no hope of getting a good bag after all."
"How late have you ever killed a cock previous to their great southern flight?"
"Never myself beyond the fifteenth of November; but Tom Draw assures me, and his asseveration was accidentally corroborated by a man who walked along with him, that he killed thirty birds last year in Hell-hole, which both of you fellows know, on the thirteenth of December. There had been a very severe frost indeed, and the ice on that very morning was quite thick, and the mud frozen hard enough to bear in places. But the day was warm, bright, and genial, and, as he says, it came into his head to see 'if cock was all gone,' and he went to what he knew to be the latest ground, and found the very heaviest and finest birds he ever saw!"
"Oh! that of course," said A---, "if he found any! Did you ever hear of any other bird so late?"
"Yes! later--Mike Sandford, I think, but some Jerseyman or other--killed a couple the day after Christmas day, on a long southern slope covered with close dwarf cedars, and watered by some tepid springs, not far from Pine Brook; and I have been told that the rabbit shooters, who always go out in a party between Christmas and New Year's day, almost invariably flush a bird or two there in mid-winter. The same thing is told of a similar situation on the south-western slope of Staten Island; and I believe truly in both instances. These, however, must, I think, be looked upon not as cases of late emigration, but as rare instances of the bird wintering here to the northward; which I doubt not a few do annually. I should like much to know if there is any State of the Union where the cock is perennial. I do not see why he should not be so in Maryland or Delaware, though I have never heard it stated so to be. The great heat of the extreme southern summer drives them north, as surely as our northern winter sends them south; and the great emigrations of the main flight are northward in February and March, and southward in November, varying by a few days only according to the variations of the seasons!"
"Well, I trust they have not emigrated hence yet--ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Commodore, with his peculiar hearty, deep-toned merriment.
"Not they! not they! I warrant them," said Archer; "but that to-morrow must bring forth."
"Come, Harry," exclaimed Forester, after a little pause, "spin us a shooting yarn, to kill the time, till we get to fat Tom's."
"A yarn! well, what shall it be?"
"I don't know; oh! yes! yes! I do. You once told me something about a wolf-hunt, and then shut up your mouth all at once, and would give me no satisfaction."
"A wolf-hunt?" cried the Commodore, "were you ever at a wolf-hunt; and here in this country, Harry?"
"Indeed was I, and--"
"The story, then, the story; we must have it."
"Oh! as for story, there is not much--"
"The story! the story!" shouted Frank. "You may as well begin at once, for we will have it."
"Oh! very well. All is one to me, but you will be tired enough of it before I have got through, so here goes for: A WOLF HUNT ON THE WARWICK HILLS," said Archer, and without more ado, spun his yarn as follows:
"There are few wilder regions within the compass of the United States, much less in the vicinity of its most populous and cultivated districts, than that long line of rocky wood-crowned heights which--at times rising to an elevation and exhibiting a boldness of outline that justifies the application to them of the term 'mountains', while at others they would be more appropriately designated as hills or knolls--run all across the Eastern and the Midland States, from the White Mountains westward to the Alleghanies, between which mighty chains they form an intermediate and continuous link.
"Through this stern barrier, all the great rivers of the States, through which they run, have rent themselves a passage, exhibiting in every instance the most sublime and boldest scenery, while many of the minor, though still noble streams, come forth sparkling and bright and cold from the clear lakes and lonely springs embosomed in its dark recesses.
"Possessing, for the most part, a width of eight or ten miles, this chain of hills consists, at some points, of a single ridge, rude, forest-clad and lonely--at others, of two, three, or even four distinct and separate lines of heights, with valleys more or less highly cultured, long sheets of most translucent water, and wild mountain streams dividing them.
"With these hills--known as the Highlands--where the gigantic Hudson has cloven, at some distant day, a devious path for his eternal and resistless waters, and by a hundred other names, the Warwick Hills, the Greenwoods, and yet farther west, the Blue Ridge and the Kittatinny Mountains, as they trend southerly and west across New York and New Jersey--with these hills I have now to do.
"Not as the temples meet for the lonely muse, fit habitations for the poet's rich imaginings! not as they are most glorious in their natural scenery--whether the youthful May is covering their rugged brows with the bright tender verdure of the tasseled larch, and the yet brighter green of maple, mountain ash and willow--or the full flush of summer has clothed their forests with impervious and shadowy foliage, while carpeting their sides with the unnumbered blossoms of calmia, rhododendron and azalea!--whether the gorgeous hues of autumn gleam like the banners of ten thousand victor armies along their rugged slopes, or the frozen winds of winter have roofed their headlands with inviolate white snow! Not as their bowels teem with the wealth of mines which ages of man's avarice may vainly labor to exhaust! but as they are the loved abode of many a woodland denizen that has retreated, even from more remote and seemingly far wilder fastnesses, to these sequestered haunts. I love them, in that the graceful hind conceals her timid fawn among the ferns that wave on the lone banks of many a nameless rill, threading their hills, untrodden save by the miner, or the infrequent huntsman's foot--in that the noble stag frays oftentimes his antlers against their giant trees--in that the mighty bear lies hushed in grim repose amid their tangled swamps--in that their bushy dingles resound nightly to the long-drawn howl of the gaunt famished wolf--in that the lynx and wild-cat yet mark their prey from the pine branches--in that the ruffed grouse drums, the woodcock bleats, and the quail chirrups from every height or hollow--in that, more strange to tell, the noblest game of trans-atlantic fowl, the glorious turkey--although, like angels' visits, they be indeed but few and far between--yet spread their bronzed tails to the sun, and swell and gobble in their most secret wilds.
"I love those hills of Warwick--many a glorious day have I passed in their green recesses; many a wild tale have I heard of sylvan sport and forest warfare, and many, too, of patriot partisanship in the old revolutionary days--the days that tried men's souls--while sitting at my noontide meal by the secluded wellhead, under the canopy of some primeval oak, with implements of woodland sport, rifle or shot-gun by my side, and well-broke setter or stanch hound recumbent at my feet. And one of these tales will I now venture to record, though it will sound but weak and feeble from my lips, if compared to the rich, racy, quaint and humorous thing it was, when flowing from the nature-gifted tongue of our old friend Tom Draw."
"Hear! hear!" cried Frank, "the chap is eloquent!"
"It was the middle of the winter 1832--which was, as you will recollect, of most unusual severity--that I had gone up to Tom Draw's, with a view merely to quail shooting, though I had taken up, as usual, my rifle, hoping perhaps to get a chance shot at a deer. The very first night I arrived, the old bar-room was full of farmers, talking all very eagerly about the ravages which had been wrought among their flocks by a small pack of wolves, five or six, as they said, in number, headed by an old gaunt famished brute, which had for many years been known through the whole region, by the loss of one hind foot, which had been cut off in a steel trap.
"More than a hundred sheep had been destroyed during the winter, and several calves beside; and what had stirred especially the bile of the good yeomen, was that, with more than customary boldness, they had the previous night made a descent into the precincts of the village, and carried off a fat wether of Tom Draw's.
"A slight fall of snow had taken place the morning I arrived, and, this suggesting to Tom's mind a possibility of hunting up the felons, a party had gone out and tracked them to a small swamp on the Bellevale Mountain, wherein they had undoubtedly made their head-quarters. Arrangements had been made on all sides--forty or fifty stout and active men were mustered, well armed, though variously, with muskets, ducking-guns and rifles--some fifteen couple of strong hounds, of every height and color, were collected--some twenty horses saddled and bridled, and twice as many sleighs were ready; with provisions, ammunition, liquor and blankets, all prepared for a week's bivouac. The plan prescribed was in the first place to surround the swamp, as silently as possible, with all our forces, and then to force the pack out so as to face our volley. This, should the method be successful, would finish the whole hunt at once; but should the three-legged savage succeed in making his escape, we were to hunt him by relays, bivouacking upon the ground wherever night should find us, and taking up the chase again upon the following morning, until continual fatigue should wear out the fierce brute. I had two horses with me, and Tim Matlock; so I made up my mind at once, got a light one-horse sleigh up in the village, rigged it with all my bear-skins, good store of whiskey, eatables, and so forth, saddled the gray with my best Somerset, holsters and surcingle attached, and made one of the party on the instant.
"Before daylight we started, a dozen mounted men leading the way, with the intent to get quite round the ridge, and cut off the retreat of these most wily beasts of prey, before the coming of the rear-guard should alarm them--and the remainder of the party, sleighing it merrily along, with all the hounds attached to them. The dawn was yet in its first gray dimness when we got into line along the little ridge which bounds that small dense brake on the northeastern side--upon the southern side the hill rose almost inaccessibly in a succession of short limestone ledges--westward the open woods, through which the hounds and footmen were approaching, sloped down in a long easy fall, into the deep secluded basin, filled with the densest and most thorny coverts, and in the summer time waist deep in water, and almost inaccessible, though now floored with a sheet of solid ice, firm as the rocks around it--due northward was an open field, dividing the wolf-dingle from the mountain road by which we always travel.
"Our plot had been well laid, and thus far had succeeded. I, with eleven horsemen, drawn up in easy pistol shot one of the other, had taken our ground in perfect silence; and, as we readily discovered, by the untrodden surface of the snow, our enemies were as yet undisturbed. My station was the extreme left of our line, as we faced westward, close to the first ridge of the southern hill; and there I sat in mute expectancy, my holsters thrown wide open, my Kuchenreuters loaded and cocked, and my good ounce-ball rifle lying prepared within the hollow of my arm.
"Within a short half hour I saw the second party, captained by our friend Garry, coming up one by one, and forming silently and promptly upon the hill side--and directly after I heard the crash and shout of our beaters, as they plunged into the thicket at its westward end. So far as I could perceive, all had gone well. Two sides, my own eyes told me, were surrounded, and the continuous line in which the shouts ran all along the farther end, would have assured me, if assurance had been needful, for Tom himself commanded in that quarter, that all was perfectly secure on that side. A Jerseyman, a hunter of no small repute, had been detached with a fourth band to guard the open fields upon the north; due time had been allotted to him, and, as we judged, he was upon his ground. Scarce had the first yell echoed through the forest before the pattering of many feet might be heard, mingled with the rustling of the matted boughs throughout the covert--and as the beaters came on, a whole host of rabbits, with no less than seven foxes, two of them gray, came scampering through our line in mortal terror; but on they went unharmed, for strict had been the orders that no shot should be fired, save at the lawful objects of the chase. Just at this moment I saw Garry, who stood a hundred feet above me on the hill, commanding the whole basin of the swamp, bring up his rifle. This was enough for me--my thumb was on the cock, the nail of my forefinger pressed closely on the trigger-guard. He lowered it again, as though he had lost sight of his object--raised it again with great rapidity, and fired. My eye was on the muzzle of his piece, and just as the bright stream of flame glanced from it, distinctly visible in the dim of morning twilight, before my ear had caught the sound of the report, a sharp long snarl rose from the thicket, announcing that a wolf was wounded. Eagerly, keenly did I listen; but there came no further sound to tell me of his whereabouts.
"'I hit him,' shouted Garry, 'I hit him then, I swon; but I guess not so badly, but he can travel still. Look out you, Archer, he's squatted in the thick there, and won't stir 'till they get close a top on him.'
"While he was speaking yet, a loud and startling shout arose from the open field, announcing to my ear upon the instant that one or more had broken covert at some unguarded spot, as it was evident from the absence of any firing. The leader of our squad was clearly of the same opinion; for, motioning to us to spread our line a little wider, he galloped off at a tremendous rate, spurning the snowballs high into the air, accompanied by three of his best men, to stop the gap which had been left through the misapprehension of the Jerseyman.
"This he accomplished; but not until the great wolf, wilier than his comrades, had got off unharmed. He had not moved five minutes before a small dark bitch-wolf broke away through our line, at the angle furthest from my station, and drew a scattering volley from more than half our men--too rapid and too random to be deadly--though several of the balls struck close about her, I thought she had got off scot free; but Jem McDaniel--whom you know--a cool, old steady hand, had held his fire, and taking a long quiet aim, lodged his ball fairly in the centre of her shoulders--over she went, and over, tearing the snow with tooth and claw in her death agony; while fancying, I suppose, that all our guns were emptied--for, by my life, I think the crafty brutes can almost reason-- out popped two more! one between me and my right hand man--the other, a large dog, dragging a wounded leg behind him, under my horse's very feet. Bob made a curious demi-volte, I do assure you, as the dark brindled villain darted between his fore legs with an angry snarl; but at a single word and slight admonition of the curb, stood motionless as though he had been carved in marble. Quickly I brought my rifle up, though steadily enough, and--more, I fancy, by good luck than management--planted my bullet in the neck, just where the skull and spine unite, so that he bounced three feet at least above the frozen snow, and fell quite dead, within twelve paces of the covert. The other wolf, which had crept out to my right hand, was welcomed by the almost simultaneous fire of three pieces, one of which only lodged its bullet, a small one by the way--eighty or ninety only to the pound--too light entirely to tell a story, in the brute's loins.
"He gave a savage yell enough as the shot told; and, for the first twenty or thirty yards, dragged his hind quarters heavily; but, as he went on, he recovered, gathering headway very rapidly over the little ridge, and through the open woodland, toward a clear field on the mountain's brow. Just as this passed, a dozen shots were fired, in a quick running volley, from the thicket, just where an old cart-way divides it; followed, after a moment's pause, by one full, round report, which I knew instantly to be the voice of old Tom's musket; nor did I err, for, while its echoes were yet vocal in the leafless forest, the owner's jovial shout was heard--
"'Wiped all your eyes, boys! all of them, by the Etarnal!--Who-whoop for our side!--and I'll bet horns for all on us, old leather-breeches has killed his'n.'
"This passed so rapidly--in fact it was all nearly simultaneous--that the fourth wolf was yet in sight, when the last shot was fired. We all knew well enough that the main object of our chase had for the time escaped us!--the game was all afoot!--three of them slain already; nor was there any longer aught to be gained by sticking to our stations. So, more for deviltry than from entertaining any real hope of overtaking him, I chucked my rifle to the nearest of the farmers, touched old Bob with the spur, and went away on a hard gallop after the wounded fugitive, who was now plodding onward at the usual long loping canter of his tribe. For about half a mile the wood was open, and sloped gently upward, until it joined the open country, where it was bounded by a high rugged fence, made in the usual snake fashion, with a huge heavy top-rail. This we soon reached; the wolf, which was more hurt than I had fancied, beginning to lag grievously, crept through it scarcely a hundred yards ahead of me, and, by good luck, at a spot where the top rail had been partially dislodged, so that Bob swept over it, almost without an effort, in his gallop; though it presented an impenetrable rampart to some half dozen of the horsemen who had followed. I was now in a cleared lot of some ten acres, forming the summit of the hill, which, farther on, sunk steeply into a dark ravine full of thick brushwood, with a small verge of thinly growing coppice not more than twenty yards in width, on tolerably level ground, within the low stone-wall which parted it from the cultivated land. I felt that I was now upon my vantage ground; and you may be sure, Frank, that I spared not the spurs; but the wolf, conscious probably of the vicinity of some place of safety, strained every nerve and ran, in fact, as if he had been almost unwounded; so that he was still twelve or fourteen paces from me when he jumped on the wall.
"Once over this, I well knew he was safe; for I was thoroughly acquainted with the ground, and was of course aware that no horse could descend the banks of the precipitous ravine. In this predicament, I thought I might as well take a chance at him with one of my good pistols, though of course with faint hopes of touching him. However, I pulled out the right hand nine-inch barrel, took a quick sight, and let drive at him; and, much to my delight, the sound was answered by the long snarling howl, which I had that day heard too often to doubt any more its meaning. Over he jumped, however, and the wall covering him from my sight, I had no means of judging how badly he was hurt; so on I went, and charged the wall with a tight rein, and a steady pull; and lucky for me was it, that I had a steady pull; for under the lee of the wall there was a heap of rugged logs into which Bob plunged gallantly, and, in spite of my hard hold on him, floundered a moment, and went over. Had I been going at top speed, a very nasty fall must have been the immediate consequence--as it was, both of us rolled over; but with small violence, and on soft snow, so that no harm was done.
"As I came off, however, I found myself in a most unpleasant neighborhood; for my good friend the wolf, hurt pretty badly by the last shot, had, as it seemed, ensconced himself among the logs, whence Bob's assault and subsequent discomfiture had somewhat suddenly dislodged him; so that, as I rolled over on the snow, I found myself within six feet of my friend, seemingly very doubtful whether to fight or fly! But, by good luck, my bullet had struck him on the hip-bone, and being of a rather large calibre, had let his claret pretty freely loose, besides shattering the bone, so that he was but in poor fighting trim; and I had time to get back to the gray--who stood snorting and panting, up to his knees in snow and rubbish, but without offering to stir--to draw my second pistol, and to give Isegrin--as the Germans call him--the coup de grace, before he could attain the friendly shelter of the dingle, to which with all due speed he was retreating. By this time all our comrades had assembled. Loud was the glee--boisterous the applause, which fell especially to me, who had performed with my own hand the glorious feat of slaying two wolves in one morning; and deep the cups of applejack, Scotch whiskey, and Jamaica spirits, which flowed in rich libations, according to the tastes of the compotators, over the slaughtered quarry.
"Breakfast was produced on the spot; cold salt pork, onions, and hard biscuit forming the principal dishes, washed down by nothing weaker than the pure ardent! Not long, however, did fat Tom permit us to enjoy our ease.
"'Come, boys," he shouted, "no lazin' here; no gormandizin'--the worst part of our work's afore us; the old lame devil is afoot, and five miles off by now. We must get back, and lay the hounds on, right stret off-- and well if the scent an't cold now! He's tuk right off toward Duckcedars'--for so Tom ever calls Truxedo Pond--a lovely crescent-shaped lakelet deep in the bosom of the Greenwoods--'so off with you, Jem, down by the road, as hard as you can strick with ten of your boys in sleighs, and half the hounds; and if you find his tracks acrost the road, don't wait for us, but stick right arter him. You, Garry, keep stret down the old road with ten dogs and all the plunder-- we'll meet at night, I reckon.'
"No sooner said than done! the parties were sent off with the relays. This was on Monday morning--Tom and I, and some thirteen others, with eight couple of the best dogs, stuck to his slot on foot. It was two hours at least, so long had he been gone, before a single hound spoke to it, and I had begun well nigh to despair; but Tom's immense sagacity, which seemed almost to know instinctively the course of the wily savage, enabling us to cut off the angles of his course, at last brought us up somewhat nearer to him. At about noon, two or three of the hounds opened, but doubtfully and faintly. His slot, however, showed that they were right, and lustily we cheered them on! Tom, marvelling the while that we heard not the cry of Jem's relay.
"'For I'll be darned,' he said, 'if he hasn't crossed the road long enough since; and that dumb nigger, Jem's not had the sense to stick to him!'
"For once, however, the fat man was wrong; for, as it appeared when we neared the road, the wolf had headed back, scared doubtless by some injudicious noise of our companions, and making a wide ring, had crossed three miles below the spot where Jem was posted. This circuit we were forced to make, as at first sight we fancied he had headed altogether back, and it was four o'clock before we got upon his scent, hot, fresh, and breast-high; running toward the road, that is, due eastward from the covert whence he had bolted in the morning. Nor were our friends inactive; for, guided by the clamors of our pack, making the forest musical, they now held down the road; and, as the felon crossed, caught a long view of him as he limped over it, and laid the fresh hounds on.
"A brilliant rally followed--we calling off our wearied dogs, and hasting to the lower road, where we found Garry with the sleighs, and dashing off in our turn through all sorts of by-paths and wood-roads to head them once again! This, with much labor, we effected; but the full winter-moon had risen, and the innumerable stars were sparkling in the frosty skies, when we flogged off the hounds--kindled our night fires-- prepared our evening meal, feasted, and spread our blankets, and slept soundly under no warmer canopy than the blue firmament--secure that our lame friend would lie up for the night at no great distance. With the first peep of dawn we were again afoot, and, the snow still befriending us, we roused him from a cedar-brake at about nine o'clock, cut him off three times with fresh dogs and men, the second day, and passed the night, some sixteen miles from home, in the rude hovel of a charcoal burner.
"Greater excitement I cannot imagine, than that wild, independent chase!--sometimes on foot, cheering the hounds through swamp and dingle, over rough cliffs and ledges where foot of horse could avail nothing. Sometimes on horseback, galloping merrily through the more open woodlands. Sometimes careering in the flying sleigh, to the gay music of its bells, along the wild wood-paths! Well did we fare, too--ay, sumptuously!--for our outskirters, though they reserved their rifles for the appropriate game, were not so sparing with the shot-gun; so that, night after night, our chaldron reeked with the mingled steam of rabbit, quail, and partridge, seethed up a la Meg Merrilies, with fat pork, onions, and potatoes--by the Lord Harry! Frank, a glorious and unmatched consummee.
"To make, however, a long tale short--for every day's work, although varied to the actors by thousands of minute but unnarratable particulars, would appear but as a repetition of the last, to the mere listener--to make a long tale short, on the third day he doubled back, took us directly over the same ground--and in the middle of the day, on Saturday, was roused in view by the leading hounds, from the same little swamp in which the five had harbored during the early winter. No man was near the hounds when he broke covert. But fat Tom, who had been detached from the party to bring up provisions from the village, was driving in his sleigh steadily along the road, when the sharp chorus of the hounds aroused him. A minute after, the lame scoundrel limped across the turnpike, scant thirty yards before him. Alas! Tom had but his double-barrel, one loaded with buck shot, the other merely prepared for partridge--he blazed away, however, but in vain! Out came ten couple on his track, hard after him; and old Tom, cursing his bad luck, stood to survey the chase across the open.
"Strange was the felon's fate! The first fence, after he had crossed the road, was full six feet in height, framed of huge split logs, piled so close together that, save between the two topmost rails, a small dog even could have found no passage. Full at this opening the wolf dashed, as fresh, Tom said, as though he had not run a yard; but as he struggled through it, his efforts shook the top rails from the yokes, and the huge piece of timber falling across his loins, pinned him completely! At a mile off I heard his howl myself, and the confused and savage hubbub, as the hounds front and rear, assailed him.
"Hampered although he was, he battled it out fiercely--ay, heroically-- as six of our best hounds maimed for life, and one slain outright, testified.
"Heavens! how the fat man scrambled across the fence! he reached the spot, and, far too much excited to reload his piece and quietly blow out the fierce brute's brains, fell to belaboring him about the head with his gun-stock, shouting the while and yelling; so that the din of his tongue, mixed with the snarls and long howls of the mangled savage, and the fierce baying of the dogs, fairly alarmed me, as I said before, at a mile's distance.
"As it chanced, Timothy was on the road close by, with Peacock; I caught sight of him, mounted, and spurred on fiercely to the rescue; but when I reached the hill's brow, all was over. Tom, puffing and panting like a grampus in shoal water, covered--garments and face and hands--with lupine gore, had finished his huge enemy, after he had destroyed his gun, with what he called a stick, but what you and I, Frank, should term a fair-sized tree; and with his foot upon the brindled monster's neck was quaffing copious rapture from the neck of a quart bottle--once full, but now well nigh exhausted--of his appropriate and cherished beverage.* [*The facts and incidents of the lame wolf's death are strictly true, although they were not witnessed by the writer.] Thus fell the last wolf on the Hills of Warwick!
"There, I have finished my yarn, and in good time," cried Harry, "for here we are at the bridge, and in five minutes more we shall be at old Tom's door."
"A right good yarn!" said Forester; "and right well spun, upon my word."
"But is it a yarn?" asked A---, "or is it intended to be the truth?"
"Oh! the truth," laughed Frank, "the truth, as much as Archer can tell the truth; embellished, you understand, embellished!"
"The truth, strictly," answered Harry, quietly--"the truth not embellished. When I tell personal adventures, I am not in the habit of decorating them with falsehood."
"I had no idea," responded the Commodore, "that there had been any wolves here so recently."
"There are wolves here now," said Archer, "though they are scarce and wary. It was but last year that I rode down over the back-bone of the mountain, on the Pompton road, in the nighttime, and that on the third of July, and one fellow followed me along the road till I got quite down into the cultivated country."
"The devil he did!"
"How did you know he was following you?" exclaimed Frank and the Commodore, almost in a breath.
"Did you see him?"
"Not I--but I heard him howl half a dozen times, and each time nearer than before. When I got out of the hills he was not six hundred yards behind me."
"Pleasant, that! Were you armed? What did you do?"
"It was not really so unpleasant, after all--for I knew that he would not attack me at that season of the year. I had my pistols in my holsters; and for the rest, I jogged steadily along, taking care to keep my nag in good wind for a spirt, if it should be needed. I knew that for three or four miles I could outrun him, if it should come to the worst, though in the end a wolf can run down the fastest horse; and, as every mile brought me nearer to the settlement, I did not care much about it. Had it been winter, when the brutes are hard pressed for food, and the deep snows are against a horse's speed, it would be a very different thing. Hurrah! here we are! Hurrah! fat Tom! ahoy! a-ho-oy!"