THE GAME FIELD 
(wary) birds out o’ the peep hole o’ me 
boat. Well, them geese set there, onsus- 
picious, a-pickin’ an’ a-prunin’ their- 
selves, contented like, you know? 
“At last I was within twenty yards 0’ 
them, so I slapped the gun’le, seein’ they 
was lined up pretty, and up popped them 
seven necks, lookin’ like there was only 
one. Then I riz up the old gun and 
‘Rip ——-. They was the d—est floppin’ 
I ever see, but nary goose riz. There 
was them seven heads,—not six, mind 
ye, but seven,—shot clean off, an’ the 
blood a-flyin’ like anything, an’ me a- 
whoopin’ an’ a-hollorin’ at the folks on 
shore. 
“That there ice fer a rod around was 
so red from blood that not a goose 
come into th’ bay till that ice melted. 
It was a desperate massacree !——Oh, 
ye need n't ‘laff, it’s as true as I stand 
here! Me father is an honest man, 
ain’t never cheated no man, an’ I can 
call on him to testify. Yes, it was a 
proper massacree !” 
We leave it to the reader to “come 
back” at Jim. 
An Unusual Midnight Encounter 
If we fail to get, about every other 
month, a letter postmarked Byron, IIl., we 
begin to fear we are losing our grip. But 
when the overdue letter from Riverside 
farm comes along, radiating good cheer 
even before the envelope is cut, all’s well 
once more. Here’s the latest, neatly type- 
written on half of what apparently once 
served as the wrapper for a magazine, 
the reverse side bearing a return address, 
a canceled three-cent stamp and the in- 
scription, “Dr. A. J. Woodcock, River- 
side Farm, Byron, III.” :— 
(Rewritten for RECREATION at the request of 
Charles Hallock.) 
Memory often harks the writer back to 
a certain day in a late December when at 2 
o'clock a.m. (alone) he was crossing the 
divide between the ultimate sources of the 
Broken-back and Paint Rock creeks, far up 
among the Big Horn peaks—a far cry. We 
were well up under the divide when the 
moon rose above the mountain and flooded 
the snowy slopes with her bright, silvery 
light. Directly my horse told me that some- 
thing was moving near us. Mind your horse, 
friend, for not the eagle himself has a keener 
or truer eye, and you shall travel far in a 
dangerous country and be successful in your 
hunting. There before us was a band of 
bounding black-tailed deer, 35 in number, 
ee, 

JIM’sS LITTLE WHITE LIGHTHOUSE 
the most glorious sight these eyes ever be- 
held. 
I slipped out of the saddle, getting Old Seal 
between me and the band of deer, which were 
now charging rapidly down upon us, drew 
the .45 caliber rifle from its holster and laid 
it across the horse, which trembled with ex- 
citement and the intense cold, but stood like 
the rim-rock on the mountain behind us. 
When within half rifle shot of us the band 
of deer halted, and in the moonlight, so in- 
tense and clear at that great elevation that 
coarse print could have been easily read, they 
gave an exhibition of the poetry of motion— 
the song (whistling snort) and dance of the 
black-tailed (mule) deer on their native 
range. -.'*;. It was a still night so that 
the dreaded body scent of the man came not 
to the nostrils lifted so eagerly to catch it. 
These deer had never met a hunter at night 
in those then pristine solitudes. My horse 
and the deer seemed to recognize each other. 
For 4 months, almost nightly, they had used 
the same range and were friends. A magnif- 
icent buck left the band and for some minutes 
pirouetted about on the mountain slope be- 
tween us, at times coming so close I could 
have hit him with one of the camp sinkers 
in my pack. He could not make out what 
kept the horse so still, and grew suspicious 
and more nervous in his dance of curiosity 
in his efforts to make out what so palpably 
baffled all his senses. At last a faint puff of 
air touched my cheek and in an instant the 
dreaded man odor, which generations of per- 
secution has taught the cervide is but the 
possible precursor of a deer’s death, trans- 
