A RAID ON THE WILD TURKEYS. 203 



base. It begets a peculiar feeling in one's mind, I 

 thought, when the lower brutes surround him and his 

 fellow-creature alone is absent. Animal organiza- 

 tions are every-where, blood throbbing and limbs 

 moving, and yet the world is as solitary to him as if 

 the planet had been sent whirling into space and no 

 living being upon it except himself. A handkerchief, 

 a hat, any thing which his brother man may have 

 worn, yields more of companionship than all the life 

 around him. 



And now, through the trees, we saw several of our 

 men running with their weapons in hand, and im- 

 mediately afterward heard the rapid reports of their 

 revolvers and rifles from the creek just below, fol- 

 lowed by the fluttering, noisy exit of turkeys from 

 among the trees. Some flew away, but most of them 

 were running, and, in their fright, passed directly 

 among the wagons. One old gobbler, with a fine 

 glossy tuft hanging at his breast, had a hard time of 

 it in running the gauntlet of our camp-followers, 

 narrrowly escaping death by a frying pan hurled from 

 the vigorous grasp of Shamus. 



This class of our game birds is noted the continent 

 over for its wildness and cunning, these qualities fur- 

 nishing old hunters with material for numberless 

 yarns, as they gather around the camp-fires and 

 weave their fancies into connected sequence. Thus 

 it has become a matter of veritable history that know- 

 ing gobblers sometimes examine the tracks that hunt- 

 ers have left to see which way they are going. 



On Silver Creek the turkeys were very tame, and 

 before it became too dark for shooting our party had 



