282 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[May 8, 1884 



DEFECTS IN ARMY PRACTICE. 

 r ¥^HE system of target practice in the regular army has 

 -*~ been tried long enough to show that there are many 

 grave defects in it. It was a good system when it was 

 started and has done good work, but this was true simply 

 because it came after a period when there was absolutely 

 no provision for instructing the men of the regular forces 

 in the handling and firing of the rifles provided for them. 

 Bad as it is now found to be, the system was capable of 

 making a vast improvement upon entire ignorance, and the 

 army of 1884, judged from a marksman's standpoint, is an 

 entirely different thing from the army of a dozen years ago. 



What some of the faults are, which have been shown to 

 exist in the present system, will be found set forth in the in- 

 teresting letter of our correspondent "C. D." He writes 

 from an army post and knows accurately the entire field of 

 facts covered iu his narrative. The present scheme, it would 

 appear, is in danger of being submerged and rendered next 

 to useless by a flood of red tape, so that when the officer has 

 completed the elaborate system of returns and has filled up 

 all the blanks which an active printing press turns out. there 

 is little time left for him to devote to the instruction of his 

 men. 



The fundamental error seems to be that too much depend- 

 ence is placed on mere emulation. This in itself is a capital 

 thing. It seems to be inseparable from rifle practice, 

 wiiether it be the civilian contest, or by men in the ranks. 

 But in the army, with its great chain of scattered posts and 

 companies, oftimes of the same regiment, located a thousand 

 miles apart on garrison or frontier duty, a system of reports 

 seems necessary. Each company is required to do a certain 

 amount of ball practice, and as far as can be done by a rigid 

 scale of rules, each man of the army is placed on exactly the 

 same footing. Certain grades are established and certain 

 percentages fixed to entitle the marker to particular grades 

 in the order of rifle shooting merit, and just here comes in 

 the inherent weakness of the system and a pretty exhibition 

 made of the jtigglery of which figures are capable. The 

 company or post commander sets his wits to work in order 

 to "beat the punch,'' as the railroader would say. There is 

 an effort to make the best showing on paper, whether that 

 snowing really represents the doings and real merit of the 

 men or not. There is no absolute dishonesty; but there are 

 arrangement of the results which, cleverly done, is apt to 

 bring out very misleading conclusions. 



There needs to be, over and beyond these routine reports, 

 some sort of supplementary examination of the men which 

 should show their ability as shots in an entirely different 

 manner from that conveyed through the present filling up of 

 blanks. A sharp visiting inspector could, in a single after- 

 noon, put a company through a course of individual, file and 

 volley firing, and make a report thereon, which, in connection 

 with the data afforded by the reports now made, would en- 

 able a very accurate estimate to be formed of the real shoot- 

 ing ability of the men, considered as skirmishers or line-of- 

 battle men in actual warfare. 



Another point upon which stress is properly placed is the 

 seemingly absurd and wasteful system of having each 

 man of the army go over each year the entire course of 

 rifle instruction. The theory is, that on a certain date of 

 each year the entire army is considered as a great ^quad of 

 recruits and put through a certain order of scores. It mat- 

 ters not whether any particular man lias shown exceptional 

 skill as a marksman, and has for years held his place as a 

 sharpshooter, he swings back to his place as a recruit, and, 

 of course, easily passes through the routine of qualification. 

 There should be some system of post-graduate marksmanship, 

 by which any particular man in the ranks can go on to more 

 difficult feats of shooting, in place of the present ever- 

 slipping : backward method. 



"We are glad to witness a disposition in various parts of 

 the country to have friendly bouts before the butts between 

 regular army and militia teams, or between the army and 

 plain civilian marksmen. Thus far the general practice has 

 been for the men in blue to get points from those who shoot 

 for pleasure. The outsiders have experimented for pleasure, 

 have made improvements which have been adopted by the 

 men under arms, and so a very steady progress has been kept 

 up. With an army of so much leisure as ours, the inventive 

 faculties of both officers and men should be stimulated to 

 the utmost. There is abundant room for changes, and radi- 

 cal ones, too, in our whole scheme of small arms, but it will 

 hardly come so long as the main effort is directed toward 

 wriggling into a certain position on the annual roll of merit, 

 and the men regarded as so many items in the account to be 

 manipulated to the best advantage. 



The Wimbledoh Meeting.— The English papers devoted 

 to the art of rifle shooting come to us with the programme 

 for the Wimbledon meeting of July next, given in its usual 

 very complete shape. The list of matches is a long one and 

 the range, of prizes large. There are many modifications 

 upon the programmes of previous years, but in the main the 

 wants of the various classes of riflemen are well looked after, 

 and there is a disposition to add prizes where the conditions 

 of the match attract marksmen, and to take away competi- 

 tions which seem to have outlived their usefulness. There is 

 a gain of £1,200 in the aggregate prize list, and with its 

 general attractiveness, there is no reason why a number of 

 American marksmen should not be found among the list of 

 entries and winners as well 



» 



"MONTY." 



WHAT combination of circumstances had led us, John 

 and I, to take up our temporary abode in the deserted 

 cabin on the southern slope of El Conquistador, it is not 

 necessary, for the purposes of this sketch, to particularize. 

 We had been there now about six weeks, and should prob- 

 ably remain that much longer. The trail from Argentum to 

 San Rafael ran down the main valley some four miles below 

 us, and, there being neither game nor ' 'mineral" as yet. dis- 

 covered, on that side of the mountain, no wandering hunter 

 nor peripatetic prospector intruded his uawelcome presence 

 upon us. Once a week one or the other of us sauntered 

 down to the trail below and met the mail carrier from Argen- 

 tum, received our share of his precious freight of letters and 

 papers, had a few moments free and easy chat while he 

 smoked his half-way pipe, and then climbed leisurely back 

 to our solitude. With this exception we had not seen, or 

 cared to see, a human face since the day we had turned our 

 backs upon the mining camp we called, for the moment, 

 home. But it was for that reason we had come, and we 

 rather dreaded the day when that gad-fly of American life, 

 called "business," should sting us back to the smoke and 

 the smelters, the riot and roar of Argentum. For the first 

 time in many years John had leisure to indulge his vaga- 

 bond instincts, to botanize and geologize, unharrassed by 

 thoughts of sulphurets, gauge, pay dirt, dips or strikes; 

 while I— well, those passages in my essay on "The Thingness 

 of the Unconditioned, as differentiated frotn the Condition 

 of Unthingness," and which have most touched and thrilled 

 the great thinkers of the present day, owe the larger part, if 

 not all, of their incisive analysis, psychological suolety, and 

 soul-stirring pathos to the hours spent on the grass in front 

 of that old cabin at the head of the gulch on El Conquistador. 

 As to who erected this cabin, his purpose in so doing, or 

 why he abandoned it I know no more than you. We had 

 heard dim rumors of it, searched for it and found it, and 

 incontinently took possession thereof. It was comfortable, 

 it was picturesque, it was home-like. It fitted as happily 

 into its surroundings as though it had resulted fiom a slow 

 process of evolution, or had arisen by a happy consentaneous 

 thought of the brown spruce boles, who had whispered to 

 each other, "Go to; let us doff our green crowns and huddle 

 ourselves together, that we may form a shelter for the wan- 

 dering brother poet, who some day will come hither to learn 

 the music of our songs." In front of the cabin, one huge 

 spruce had thrown himself prone, as though to rest after- 

 long centuries of laborious uprightness, and it was there I 

 first saw the subject of this sketch. John was in his favorite 

 lair under a huge pine that overhung the stream, watching 

 for the hundredth time the antics of a water ouzel, and I was 

 stretched lazily on one of the bunks in the cabin, when, 

 through the open door I caught sight of a stranger sitting 

 at ease upon the log. He had not yet seen me, and 1 had 

 time for a protracted study ef him before his eyes met mine. 

 He was in the prime of life, that is, neither old nor young, 

 though his hair, brown in shade, showed in the sunlight 

 faint sittings of gray. His eyes were the blackest and 

 keenest 1 have ever seen, with a clear, straightforward gaze 

 that somehow seemed to pierce all defenses of sham and 

 custom, and read the inner man like an open book. His 

 forehead was rather low and sloped downward to a shapely, 

 slightly pointed nose, under which his black moustache 

 curved backward over a mouth whose thin lips parted 

 slightly over white teeth in a half-expectant, half-contempla- 

 tive way. His form was lithe and muscular, giving one the 

 impression that he would be a bitter antagonist in a personal 

 conflict. He was dressed in a suit of some grayish-brown ma- 

 terial, fitting closely and giving him a natty, jaunty appear- 

 ance, contrasting strongly with the general baggy look of the 

 ordinary San Juaner, clad in woollen shirt and canvas overalls. 

 As he sat, carelessly contemplating the cabin, he seemed 

 so alert, fearless and keenly alive in every nerve and fiber, 

 so interfused with the strength of the rocks, the vigor of the 

 pine trees, the dash and sparkle of the running brook; so 

 in keeping with all the surroundings, so much a part and 

 parcel of this wild fife, that it never occurred to me to be 

 surprised at his sudden appearance, or to do him the imper- 

 tinence of attempting to act as host in a place where he was 

 evidently far more at home than I could ever hope to be. 

 He was so different from anything I had yet seen among 

 the biped inkab-tants of that country that my heart instinc- 

 tively warmed to him, and I think he read the feeling, as his 

 eyes met mine, with a glance in which was neither surprise 

 nor doubt, neither silly self-assertion nor loutish subser- 

 viency, but a clear, straightforward gaze of modest equality. 

 This was the beginning of our acquaintance, which grew 

 and strengthened every day. He was so much a resultant 

 of the hills and rocks, such a true "montagnard" in every 

 look and gesture, that I found myself unconsciously calling 

 him by the half-playful, half-affectionate, diminutive 

 "Monty," a freedom which he did not resent, accepting the 

 name as calmly as though it were his proper appellative, 

 What his real name was I never thought to ask him, and he 

 never volunteered the information. In regard to his past 

 history, or his present business in this remote mountain 

 vallev, he would furnish us no light whatever. To all our 

 delicately-worded hints, as well as to more outspoken and 

 direct questioning, he presented his buckler of impassive 

 taciturnity, against which our interrogatory javelins were 

 hurled in vain. So taciturn was he, that I do not think, in 

 all the time of our acquaintance, I ever heard him speak a 

 dozen consecutive words of English. When he did speak, it 

 was generally in so low atone that he could hardly be heard, 

 and often in a language which, though I was familiar with 

 most of the tongues of that polyglot country, 1 could not 



him ' 'Can tuto rakker Romanes, miiLpal?" though the twinkle 

 in his eye left me still in doubt as to whether he understood 

 me or not, I received no more satisfactory answer than when 

 I addressed him in English. But with all his limitation.^ as 

 to conversation, there was a charm in his presence it was im- 

 possible to resist. His cheery simplicity, his shy confidence 

 a certain subdued gravity and compassionate air, as though 

 he so near to the very heart of nature, pitied those who. like 

 ourselves caught but fitfully the rustle of her robe, were all 

 so— I had almost said unhuman, that 1 felt sometimes as 

 though Praxiteles' Faun had come to life in these fastnesses 

 of our western Sierras. But alas! one human failing he 

 had, almost abnormally developed— that of curiosity; net 

 manifested by asking questions, for, as I said before, ne 

 seemed to consider speech too valuable a commodity to »c 



lightly used, but in making tactual and visual inspection of 

 everything belonging to our "outfit." In less than a week 

 after our first meeting there was not an article in our cabin 

 which had not undergone a thorough scrutiny from him. A 

 small clock, which John had insisted on bringing, especially 

 excited his curiosity. He would sit for an hour at a titre 

 gravely watching the beat of its exposed pendulum, and 

 listening to its sharp metallic "tick-tock, tick-took." One 

 peculiarity he had which assimilated him still more in my 

 estimate to the wild life around him. The sense of smell, 

 which in the rest of us had been atrophied into comparative 

 uselessness, was in him as acute as that of sight or hearing. No 

 investigation was complete until he had submitted the object 

 to this last crucial test. He often dined with us, and it 

 was curious to note how the nose instead of the palate was 

 made the judge of any new dish submitted to him. But this 

 sense was not developed at the expense of the others, for 

 they were all normally keen. As John said, he had the eye 

 of a hawk, the ear of a stag, the foot of a fox, the nose of a 

 hound, and the nous of a wild turkey. His taste, iu matters 

 of food, was exceptionally plain — I had almest said daiuty. 

 He ate very little meat, contenting himself with vegetables 

 and bread, and as to tobacco, whisky, tea or coffee, he 

 literally abhorred them. His healthy natural taste revolted 

 against them as coarse stimulants, unnecessary and repul- 

 sive to a palate unspoiled by artificial pungenta. 



He had an unconquerable aversion to dogs, and the first 

 time that Swipes, our bull-terrier, appeared upon the scene, 

 Monty left the cabin, and vanished up the gulch with a haste, 

 which, if all his movements had not been so unstudiedly 

 graceful, would have bordered upon the undignified; nor, 

 after he had become more accustomed to our quadrupedal 

 companion, did he ever seem to feel at ease iu his presence. 

 Friendship there never was between them, only a state of 

 suspended hostility, and it generally took all our authority, 

 backed by the persuasive force of kicks and cuffs, to prevent 

 Swipes flying at our guest's throat, whenever they were 

 together. There was a reserve, an impassive dignity about 

 our friend, which prevented our asking impertinent- 

 questions as to his domestic affairs, and his habitat and 

 place of abode were unknown to us, until accidentally, in 

 one of our rambles up one of the ramifying gulches which 

 radiated, like the fingers of a hand, from the main canon in 

 which we were, we stumbled upon his rustic home, hidden 

 so cunningly in a thick cluster of pines, that only accident 

 revealed its presence. Here, much to our surprise, we found 

 his wife and family, the latter consisting of five ruddy 

 youngsters, fac-similes in everything of their father. At 

 least, for charity's sake, We will call her his wife, though 

 from various circumstances, we were satisfied that no legal 

 or religious ceremony, such as is deemed essential in more 

 straight-laced communities, had ever thrown the aegis of its 

 sanction over their companionship. A weak compliance 

 with popular prejudices was not one of Monty's failings) 

 though innately pure, according to his lights, he was a law 

 unto himself; but, though neglecting, probably from an in- 

 nocent ignorance, that such a thing was elsewhere demanded, 

 the requirements of legalized matrimony, he was a faithful 

 husband and a loving father. The home was well stocked with 

 food, simple but healthful, and though the furniture generally 

 was scanty and rude, we could but admire the softness and 

 cleanness of the luxurious beds, made of the sweet-scented 

 vernal grass, evidently gathered afresh every morning. 



We did not make much headway in establishing friendly 

 relations with the family, as Mrs. M. was generally too 

 much occupied with household cares to have time for gos- 

 sip, and the children, shy as wood rats, scuttled off at our 

 approach and laid perdu behind the fallen pines till we had 

 taken our departure. This was hardly to be wondered at, 

 as we felt assured that we were the first strangers from the 

 outer world whom they had ever seen. But Monty himself 

 was more sociable, and a day rarely passed that he was not 

 to be found in his favorite seat on the old log. Here he 

 would sit while I talked to him, saying little or nothing 

 himself, but listening with calm enjoyment and an air of 

 placid receptivity, as though devoutly assenting to every- 

 thing I said, though sometimes a subdued twinkle in his 

 keen black eye would seem to cast a shade of derisive doubt 

 on some of my statements. Whatever ideas I advanced— 

 whether upon bread making or the telephone, "Shakespeare 

 or the musical glasses"— he met them all with the same air 

 of grave, respectful attention. I was often puzzled to decide 

 whether my words flew as far above him as the wind that 

 stirred the treetops over bis head, and with as little mean- 

 in<* in their sound, or whether, on the other hand, he had 

 not some familiar Socratic "daemon," who had already re- 

 vealed to him all this crude product of thought which I was 

 laboriously spreading before him. Emotion of any kind 

 rarely stirred the fine-graven lines of his Sphinx-like face; 

 the art of self-repression had in him reached its highest de- 

 velopment. Though utterly unconventional he was "high- 

 toned" in the best sense of the word. I never knew him to 

 do an ungentlemanly act or be swayed by a low impulse. 

 His every movement was characterized by dignified cour- 

 tesy and unembarrassed ease. He never lounged and he 

 never hurried. His walk was smooth and gliding, yet full 

 of a nervous grace that was the furthest possible removal 

 from affectation or languor. In the care of his face and 

 hands he was so dainty a6 to be almost finical. In a word, a 

 thoroughbred gentleman from head to foot, with an innate 

 delicacy and refinement that would have put to the blush 

 manv who had possessed a million-fold his advantages. _ 



I find myself loath to antoroaeb the sad catastrophe, winch 

 brought to sudden end this friendship, so dear and so unique. 

 Something had gone wrong at the smelter in Argentum,_ and 

 an urgen ^message had been despatched to John requiring 

 his immediate attendance. When the bearer, Tom Lee a 

 burly miner, reached us, it was too late in the day to start 

 on a return trip, so arrangements were made to leave early 

 in the morning. We were sitting in the cabin, talking des- 

 ultorily about business matters, when suddenly Lee s hand 

 drooped to the butt of bis revolver, and in a moment the long 

 shining barrel was leveled at something outside the door. 

 Turning quickly to see what the target might be, I caught 

 sight of Monty in his accustomed place on the end of the 

 loo- with his head turned sideways looking at something 

 which had attracted his attention up the gulch. Before I 

 could speak or move the pistol cracked, and I saw for a mo 

 ment the livid mark, square on the temple, where the bullet 

 had done its cruel work. 



"Good shot," said Lee, coolly, as he threw out the empty 

 shell, and put in a fresh cartridge. 



I was stunned for a moment at the suddenness of the atro- 

 city and then broke forth in execration of the brutal deed. 

 The blood-stained ruffian listened stolidly for a moment, and 

 then interrupted me with : "Seems to me you make a — of a 

 fuss about a mountain rati" H. P, Ufford. 



