320 



The Ajncricaii Aiii:;lcr. 



yet a dozen years of age, but who 

 appeared to know every nook and twist 

 of that stream as if he had been born 

 in it rather than along side of it. One 

 morning, he said: 



"Boss! 1 can take you where you 

 can see the biggest turtle that was ever 

 looked at. He's a buster, fur sure." 



So, a day or so afterwards, we 

 started with all the necessaries that 1 

 could think of in order to pot that 

 game. Sam, the boy, was in a state of 

 ecstacy. His bare feet and legs could 

 hardly keep from running off with 

 Sam, while his open lips and white 

 even teeth were a sight to see. His 

 happiness, that August morning, was 

 of the degree, superlative degree. An 

 hour's walk brought us to a low-lying 

 meadow, the grass from which was 

 now reposing as hay in the mows of 

 the big bam of the homestead. At the 

 edge of this meadow was a tumble of 

 big boulders which, no doubt, had been 

 placed there when that particular bit 

 of land had been cleaned up by the 

 pioneer farmers of a century and a half 

 before. Between the interstices of 

 these big stones had grown up clvisters 

 of trees — sycamores, elms, beeches, 

 sassafras and chestnut. The trees were 

 of huge size, the growth of many 

 years. Here the same river flowed 

 that I was catching my suckers in. 

 Reaching this fringe of trees, stumps 

 and stones, Sam commenced a by -no- 

 means still hunt. He was contiiinally 

 shouting, "Here he is," but when I 

 got there it was only to find he wasn't. 

 A good deal of that sort of thing be- 

 comes decidedly monotonous, as I 

 began to find it. Then came such a 

 shout of happiness, without the call of 

 "here he is," that I felt that particular 

 turtle had been located. Sure enough, 

 he was there, and, as Sam had stated, 



he was a buster. An uglier looking 

 thing than that same turtle, I never 

 saw. He was reposing in a cleft 

 between three of the bigger stones. 

 The way they rested on the ground 

 gave a sort of opening, and from that 

 opening a narrower one led directly to 

 one of the deep pools spoken of above. 

 I tried baited hooks with wire snells in 

 front of him. He simply bit through 

 wire after wire until my supply was 

 exhausted. He was a fighter as well 

 as biter. Several of the hooks were 

 stuck in his jaws, and he was mad 

 clean through. The thought of ' ' quit- 

 ting " never entered the head of that 

 amphibian. When I took a pull on a 

 hook, he would stretch out those scaly 

 fore arms, spread out the strong claws 

 of the feet, and then sag back, his jaws 

 opening and shutting like a bit of 

 working machinery. His head was 

 enormous, the skin of the neck hanging 

 in convoluted folds. The power of 

 those jaws was simply prodigious, the 

 ending of the mouth being a bill-like 

 horn and shaped like a hawk's beak. 

 After an hour's work I was in despair. 

 The snapper still reposed in his home. 

 If he was mad, so was I. I sent Sam 

 to cut some pieces of wood three feet 

 long, which he soon returned with. 

 Then began a game of poke. Sam 

 would stir him up on one side. Each 

 time he punched him, Sam had some- 

 thing to say — it was a sort of one-sided 

 colloquial affair, in which Sam did the 

 talking and the turtle the listening. 

 But the rage of that snapper grew with 

 the punching. He would hiss and hiss 

 continually, varj-ing that goose-like 

 sound by grabbing the punching stick 

 and holding to it, like a bull dog in a 

 fighting match with another dog. It 

 was that frenzied rage that led to his 

 downfall. Sam had secured a big pile 



