276 THE BEST OF THE FUN i 



whether to aim at the wounded buck, or at the bearer of 1 



a still more attractive set of horns. The result was very I 



similar to that generally following upon a blaze into the j 



brown of a covey of partridges, viz. nothing to show for j 



it. The shot no doubt went over the lot, as in a close j 



cluster they disappeared into the precipitous covert. ; 



" Sure to have him ! " said Jim. But we didn't ; and | 



there my story ends, so far as that deer is concerned. I 



The moral is perhaps best conveyed in Mat's emphatic | 



diction as delivered that night over the camp fire : ** You : 



ain't got no claim to call a deer your'n while he can 1 



stand on his legs. I just keep my Winchester a-pumpin' ] 



till the son of a gun lies down." To cap this, Jim of j 



course had a story— of how a deer jumped up and i 

 knocked him over when he had taken it for dead and 

 more than half cut its throat, giving him till nightfall 



before he could secure it ; " and he wouldn't ha' gone on | 



till then, only he and his mate hadn't had fresh meat for | 



three days, and were run out of bacon besides." Then ' 

 he followed on with a tale of a bear being shot and killed 



with never a mark of a bullet upon him (an assertion j 



towards which I myself can offer corroborative evidence, j 



in the solemn avowal that I once shot, and afterwards 1 



ate, an antelope on which the bullet had left no wound or | 



sign whatever). Jim's story went about thus — after the j 



customary preface of date and district, partnership, and ' 



so forth : " Me and Bob Jeffares had had no luck at all, ' 



while George Smith and young Sid Bromley (he didn't I 



count, he knowed no more nor a grainger, but he done 1 



to look arter the cooking and the skins. Bless you, if | 



he'd gone setting a b'ar-trap he'd a sprung it on hisself for j 

 sartin — and not the first either, as I've knowed catched). 



George were the terriblest fellar for b'ar ever you heerd | 

 tell of. Seemed as though, if there were a b'ar in the 

 country, he couldn't help running agin' him. He'd killed 

 seven that fall ; and we hadn't got one, though we wasn't 

 above twenty mile apart. Well, we'd come across b'ar- 

 track, and killed a bait handy ; and me and Bob was 

 going round to the trap next morning when we sees a 

 little black b'ar coming right along towards us. ' You 



