The wild turkey. 40 



tended to weep over the perfidy of man and the splendid 

 shots they had lost. They shook hands again after the 

 embrace, and my friend told his " brother" that his con- 

 duct had been so noble in thus turning the tables that 

 he would waive all claim to the sum of money which was 

 due to him, and suggested that it should be taken out in 

 drinks the next time they met in town. This projjosition 

 being favorably received, they doffed hats, bowed lowly, 

 and promised to let each other's cartridges alone for the 

 future, as abstracting them from guns while out shooting 

 was unworthy of generous rivals. The dead turkey hav- 

 ing been brought in, the two men commenced calling 

 alternately — one using his mouth, and the other a caller 

 made out of a turkey's wing — but, not receiving any 

 response after two hours' steady calling, they concluded 

 to start for home. On our way back we met a man who 

 had been in a blind for eight hours, and though he 

 had been calling persistently, and receiving responses 

 occasionally, yet no turkey had been polite enough to 

 come within range of his gun. 



Finding he could do nothing that day, he joined us on 

 our homeward march, and as we trudged onward my 

 waggish friend regaled him with the tale about the en- 

 chanted turkey, and insisted that we had killed it, so 

 that it would never again be heard in that part of the 

 world. Greene insisted that we had not killed it, and 

 that it would live forever as a monument to the super- 

 stitions of negroes, and the romancing power of certain 

 hunters, who had lived so long among the gobblers that 

 the only language they could speak properly was that of 

 the turkeys. The march was enlivened by so many witty 

 sallies and grim jokes that I was sorry when our roads 

 diverged, and each wended his way to his own domicile. 

 For gobblers dead, what more than funeral ntes ! My 

 " enchanted " specimen having been found to turn the 

 scales at twenty-five pounds, was roasted to a nut-brown 

 3 



