442 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Iteo. 80, 1888. 



SHEPHERD F. KNAPP. 



Died Dec. 23, 1888. 



"3Mti8 ille fleb-ilis occid'ltr 

 A S the early worsMppers from tlie Heights of Fort Washington 

 were wending their way yester-Christmas Day to the village 

 church, expectant again, ere the rising of the snn, of the angelic 

 anthem which, on the earliest Christmas morning, those who 

 "were keeping watch over their flocks in the field" were first of 

 men to hear, "GJoria in Excelsis Deo,'" there passed them a silent 

 and nnseen spirit on its retnrn to the God who gave it. Peace had 

 come to a man "of good will." Shepherd F. Knapp, .Inst before the 

 opening of this day, had given np the ghost. 



Ab the mournful tidings floated on the air and filled the village 

 in which he had long resided, solemn and sad were the greetings 

 between neighbors among whom-he had lived for two score years 

 and more, honored for his public spirit, admired for his generous 

 hospitality, and beloved for his goodness and liis charitj% The 

 usual greeting of this, the first of all the Christian holidays, was 

 not heard, but instead were bowed heads, deep sighs and low- 

 spoken regrets for the friend who had just passed away from them. 



Mr. Knapp was bom in Beekman street, New York, In the year 

 1832. At that time the stores and residences of business men were 

 In close proximity. The liouse of Mr. Knapp's birth adjoined in 

 the rear the store where the firm of Lee & Knapp carried on the 

 leather business— then, as now, "the Swamp," and Gideon Lee— 

 erst mayor of New York— was the senior, and Shepherd Knapp, 

 the father of the subject of our sketch, the junior partner. 



At the beginning of the year of the birth of young Knapp, the 

 population of the city was about 330,000, but this number had been 

 reduced during the summer in which he was born by some 20,000 

 victims of the cholera, which, in that year, for the first time in- 

 vaded and swept through the town. 



Then Greenwich Village, the southerly line of which was Chris- 

 topher street and the easterly boundary Greenwich lane, now 

 Greenwich avenue, was more distant in space and more than 

 trebly distant in time from "the city" than are now the Heights 

 of Fort Washington from its extended limit of dense population. 



Mr. Knapp saw and was part, as it were, of the great growth of 

 the metropolis; but he grew up with the older ideas, customs and 

 habits, now less often seen; respect for elders and superiors, equal- 

 ity among his fellows, tempered with manly self-respect and the 

 observances of the olden times. These admirable qualities— part 

 of his nature— never deserted him. but were distinguishing fea- 

 tures of his entire life, and won and secured to him the almost 

 unexampled popularity which, always and in every sphere, like a 

 halo surrounded him. His splendid physiqiic, his strength, his 

 health, and his consequent great animal spirits, early developed in 

 him a pervading love of the sports of the field and the water. 



When a mere youth he removed with his father to the latter's 

 new residence at Washington Heights; the fann extending from 

 the Kingsbridge road to the Hudson. In those days that teeming 

 river was the home of the M'oakflsh and the striped bass, and along 

 its banks, from Spuyt«n Duyvil Creek to Manhattan Cove, 

 young "Sliep" was known and admired as a devoted and skiUful 

 fisherman. He was also early attracted to the south side of Long 

 Island, and with the companions of his boyhood, Horace Waldo, 

 Charles Banks and George Wilmerding, formed a sportsman's 

 club, the shooting and fishing area of which extended from Baby- 

 lon to the grounds and waters now of the South Side Sportsmen's 

 Club. There then stood the hostelry of that good and genial 

 sportsman, honored and beloved of the brotherhood of the rod 

 and gun, Obe Snedecor. Out of this small beginning came the 

 present numerous-membered South Side Sportsmen's Club, of 

 which Mr. Knapp was one of the founders. The next will be the 

 first opening day for thirty successive years that Mr. Knapp has 

 not been the earliest among the early to cast his fly and "kill" his 

 complement of trout, the weight of his capture usually standing 

 as the head of the scale. ■ 



With the gun Mt. Knapp was equally facile as with the rod and 

 fly, and deer, duck and many a Bob White have been the reward 

 of his sldll. Only last month he was afield behind his well-trained 

 dogs on his place near Babylon, where the quail had been numer- 

 ous, as usual on Long Island, up to the opening day. 



The Wawayanda Club, with its commodious club house, on 

 "Captree" Island, "WTiig Inlet," within sight and sound of the 

 ''many- voiced ocean," owned him as a founder and president. 

 Many a summer morning in the years gone by was he there embark- 

 ing on one of the club yachts for the fishing grounds in "the old 

 South Bay," where the blueflsh school at times and the sea bass 

 andblackflsh afl:ord enlivening sport and the wary sheepshead 

 rewards the patient angler who knows the srrounds, the wrecks, 

 the sunkea logs or tbe mussel beds wnere this noble fish finds its 

 food and crushes the black and serried masses of Crustacea. 



Other times, ere the "morn in russet mantle clad" appeared, 

 Mr. Knapp would be upon the sands of "Point Democrat" or on 

 the shallows or beach of "Oak Island"— "stool" out for snipe— and 

 returning with abundant reward for loss of sleep and solaced for 

 the cramps incident to the ."Down, boys— mark" as a flock of 

 yellowlegs or other big bay birds came sailing against the wind, 

 whirling and hovering amid the «imu\acra, until scattered and 

 away \vith many a frightened yelp and cry before his gun, which 

 had played sad havoc among them. Amid such scenes was his 

 glory in his leisure hours, and no sportsman ever more keenly en- 

 joyed these sports than this prince among them. 



He, however, never permitted these outdoor attractions to 

 interfere with the more serious duties of life. He was a man of 

 affairs, to which he gave fuU attention. These sports afforded 

 him recreation and strengthened him for more important matters, 

 and promised a long lease of life, cut short, alasi too rudely in its 

 prime. "What shadows M'e are and what shadows we pursue!" 



This sketch is confined to that portion of Mr. Knapp's ' life 

 appropriate to a sportsman's journal. Other pens will give testi- 

 mony of his business life, and other writers depict him as a patron 

 —with the Bonners, the Worths and the Vanderbilts— of the turf, 

 and teU of his love for man's noblest friend, the horse. 



Tills narrative presents Mr. Knapp only to that brotherhood 

 who love the pastimes of the open air, the green fields, the placid 

 lakes, the flowing brooks, tlie pursuit of deer, the shooting of fowl 

 and birds, and the killing of fish. In all these— in inspiration, in 

 enthusiasm and success— he ranked primus inter pares. 



How his stalwart form, his pleasant smile, and his cheery voice 

 will be missed alone the South Side, over among the islands, on 

 the waters of the bay, by the moaning sea that breaks on Fire 

 Island's sandy shore, at the club, on the river and up the favored 

 brook 



"Which winds about, and in and out, 



With here a blossom sailing. 

 And here and there a lusty trout," 



as it goes on forever to meet "the brimming river." But most of all 

 by you, dear friends, companions from his early days, who 

 knew him to the very depths of his noble nature and loved him; the 

 least among whom am I who lay this humble tribute of friendship 

 and aflfection upon his tomb and pray that hia soul may have rest. 

 >t4.NHATlAlirviM:-K, Deo. 26, J. HJ, D, 



Address all communicutiom to the Forest and Stream PvJj. Co. 



THE PHANTOM BUCK OF BAXTER PEAK. 



BY E. HOTTGH. 



C^LEAE-shining, yet soft and gentle, always was the 

 ^ sun over the Enchanted. Valley. In the spring liquid 

 amber of light and warmth; in the summer mellow melted 

 gold; in the fall a streaming glory of color and content; 

 in the winter sweet reproach to any who might fear a 

 breath of cold. 



I say the Enchanted Valley, I do not know how to name 

 it better. It is only a few years since I left New Mexico, 

 but the life there, the land itself, the old surrounding's, 

 all have faded and lapsed and merged into a dream whose 

 edge I cannot imlap from that of reality. The Uttle val- 

 ley at the foot of Baxter Peak is the valley of a vision — a 

 bri mm ing cup in the mormtain's hand, shaken full and 

 ti-embling over with golden days and golden dreams. 

 Those were boys' days that were" lived there; those were 

 boys' dreams that were tlreamed there. I was a boy 

 then. And since I feel at least a hundred and seventy- 

 five years old to-day, I claim tliat I had a right to be a 

 boy then, and that I have a right now to say that I lived 

 in an enchanted valley .1 only wish I were the same boy 

 and in the same valley to-day.' 



There was something strange about that little vallev 

 and its inhabitants. I can shut my eyes and bring it all 

 before me in a gray pa-norama. Let me do that now. 



As I remember it, there never was a jollier, more reck- 

 less, happy -go-luckier lot of fellows than we who peopled 

 the valley there by Baxter Peak. No one was ever sick. 

 No one ever died. No one ever grew discouraged or dis- 

 contented, or "blue" or vmliappy in any way. No one 

 was ever disappointed in love, because there wasn't any- 

 body to love but just the boys; and that's different. HtiU, 

 the boys got along pretty w"ell together, barring an occa- 

 sional little bit of friendly shooting over a game of poJter 

 or something of that sort. Poor? Why, bless you! we 

 didn't any of us know where the next box of cartridges 

 was to come from. Yet we were rich. Rich in hope; rich 

 in youth and health and inexperience; rich in ignorance 

 of life; rich in cloth-of-gold and high-walled castles, and 

 beautiful dreams of beautiful things. Richer, that is sure, 

 than any of us will ever be again until we get to the City 

 whose streets are paved with gold — where, I do believe, 

 some of those boys will go. Happy? Say, now — ^talk 

 about happiness! 



We were all miners down there. It was our business 

 to wrest the ruddy gold from the rude earth. At least, 

 the Baxter Bugle said it was, and we all thought so. But 

 we didn't wrest so very much ruddy gold. We rested 

 ourselves a good deai more. We all had claims. We had 

 the whole country staked out, safe against foreign inva- 

 sion, and there wasn't a decent-sized pifion tree on the 

 whole mountain that didn't have half a dozen location 

 notices tacked on it. We knew all alx)ut fissure veins, 

 dips, spurs and angles, pay dirt, grass roots, two lumdred 

 ounces to the ton, and all the rest of that. We all knew 

 that the country was fuU of ruddy gold, bubbling over 

 Avith it, and that all that was necessary to make us all 

 rich and send us back to that distant and wondrous land 

 known as the "States,'' was the advent of a httle outside 

 capital to develop the camp. We didn't have quite capi- 

 tal enough. I don't suppose om- joint funds would have 

 bought more than about two kegs of blasting powder, and 

 you can't develop much with two kegs. Eut we used to 

 get up in the morning, or afternoon — it didn't matter 

 which — and go up on the hill with oxu- picks and .shovels, 

 and knock aroimd a little, easy like, so as not to disturb 

 the ruddy gold too much, and tell each other how disgust- 

 ingly rich we all would be if we could only interest a 

 little outside capital. And then we would sit down in the 

 sun, and talk half Spanish, half English, and smoke cigar- 

 ritos, and lie, and tell himting stories. 



It was up there on the hill, looking down on the En- 

 chanted Valley, that I first heard of the phantom buck 

 of Baxter Peak. That isn't a lie. It's only a hunt- 

 ing story; and it isn't any slouch of a stx5ry, either, if a 

 fellow could only tell it so as to make it seem as real as it 

 was, although vvhen one comes to talking of phantoms 

 and enchanted valleys and that sort of thing, there will, 

 of course, be some folks who will remark slightingly 

 about "enchanted fiddlesticks," and who will pooh-pooh 

 at the story as "stuff and nonsense," and say that the 

 whole thing was an actual dream or an actiial lie. Those 

 are the kind of people who wanted to know if the Count 

 in Hawthorne's "Marble Faun" actually had hair on his 

 ears. I don't want any of them to read tliis, anyhow. 



In plain English, there was a buck up on Baxter Peak 

 that liad a foot about as big as a flat-iron; and nobody 

 could kUl him. More than that, nobody could get a shot 

 at him. More than that, nobody could even get to see 

 him. 



How did we know he was there? Why, he walked or 

 ran and stamped and jumped aU over that entu-e country. 

 He came down to the edge of town, chasser-ed over the 

 foothills, climbed upon aJl the peaks, and filled the top 

 of Baxter Peak — which was his favorite haunt — as full of 

 tracks as an egg is of meat. How did we know it was 

 the same buck? He had a chunk broken off Ms left hind 

 foot, and a,s was remai-ked the rest of iiis feet were big as 

 sadirons. Anybody could have told him. A man from 

 New York could have told him. An Englishman could 

 have told him. 



In that little mining commtmity which populated the 

 Enchanted Valley there were a dozen men of lifelong ex- 

 perience on the frontier, men who were skillful hunters 

 m every sense of the word and who could shoot a button 

 off your coat across the street with a pistol, to say nothing 

 of a rifle. But what was the use? INot one of these men 

 had ever seen a hair of the phantom buck. They could 

 only find his tracks. It became a point of honor among 

 all the deer hunters of the camp to kill that 

 buck. There wasn't a hunter there who hadn't been out 

 after him and came back mthout him. At first the "big 

 Inju-ns" among the boys used to brag about how they 

 would go out some day and bring that buck in ; but one 

 by one they tried it and became quiot. Big Hungi-y 

 couldn't get him, and even Old Man Hightower, who 

 never had come back without meat, had nothing what- 

 ever to say about it, except that he "b'iieved roe d — n 



thing wMz a shadder." Perhaps that was where the idea 

 first originated. Certain it is that after Old Man High- 

 tower's failure the buck gradually began to be Icnown as 

 the "shadder buck of Baxter," 'and began also to b« 

 described with a soi-t of pi-ide, and with much pictxiresque 

 profanity, to newcomers at the camp, as being the blank- 

 est and so forth critter in the range. This state of affau-s 

 continued throughout two sea-sons, dming all of which 

 time the old strategist preserved a sti'ict incognito, so to 

 speak; and such was the pique excited over him that he 

 became the best advertised feature of the region, it being 

 even boasted that, although Bonito City and Copperville 

 had each a gold mill, neither of them could boast of a 

 shadow buck. 



In this condition of affairs it became apparent to every 

 tenderfoot and half -fledged hunter in the c^irip that all 

 that was necessai-y to achieve sudden and pornianent 

 greatness in that locality was to kill the Plianloiu Buck. 

 Many were the secret, dark and midnight interviews 

 whereat plans for his destruction were discussed. Many 

 were the stealthy expeditions out into the hiUs, under- 

 taken in the forlorn hope of outmtting him or cal«Snng 

 him unawares. Of no avail. Dirt, fresh spurred by the 

 ragged hoof, a whisk- of closing pifion branches, a loud 

 whistling note of defiance or derision— sxich were the 

 rewards of the pursuers of the Phantom Buck. 



It never snowed in the lower altitudes in that gentle 

 counti'y, hxit sometimes in midwinter a light skmiy of 

 snow would he for a day or so on the top of Baxter Peak; 

 and occasionally a light fog, perhaps more properly the 

 wing-sweep of the mountain clouds, would hang over the 

 upper hiUs and moisten the bushes and soften up the 

 ground to a little extent. 



On the 14th day of .January, 188-, an unusually heavy 

 snow fell. It could be seen wbitening the foothills almost 

 down to the camp, and the tops of the brovm old senti- 

 nels of our little valley had turned white in a single 

 night, in fright at the unusual onset of the frigid north 

 wind. On the morning of the following day the srm rose 

 clear and bright. It was peeping through "^the notch be- 

 tween the PatOB and Carizo mountains as a solitary foot- 

 man, accompanied by an old hammerless Martini-Henry 

 military rifle (with a barrel about six feet long, and a 

 caliber* big enough for a cat to crawl down), might 

 have been seen wending his way up through the first 

 foothills of Baxter Peak, resolved on glory or an all-day 

 walk. The footman was myself; the rifle was an arm 

 left at Uncle John Brother's hotel by some poor fellow 

 who was dead broke and had to eat. I boarded at Uncle 

 John's myself. He was taking care of my Winchester 

 about then. I didn't hke to borrow my own gun. It 

 wouldn't have been etiquette, anyhov,'. There will be 

 some readers who will appreciate this delicacy; and then 

 again there will be some who won't. The latter have 

 never been dead broke in New Mexico. For aU such I 

 will say that Uncle John usually had almost all our guns, 

 and it wasn't considered poUte for a fellow to ask him for 

 his own gun, as that would have been a practical vitia- 

 tion of the pledge. We borrowed ea.ch otlier's guns — of 

 Uncle John. This system arose from the fact that we 

 were all "developing" claims and waiting for outside 

 capital. 



Well, the gun and I struggled on up through the foot- 

 hills, and the stm struggled on up over the opposite moun- 

 tains. The snow gi-ew deeper as the upper altitudes were 

 approached. 



But now, down below in the valley, great white rolls 

 and scrolls and sheets of clouds whirled in fantastic 

 tumult, blotting' out the cabins and the one long smooth 

 street. The mists rose up the mountain side. _ Wraith- 

 like white whisijs of vapor swam, glided, skurried across 

 Lone Mountain, across the Apache Canon, and came over 

 on the green sides of Baxter Peak. Strange white forms 

 shpped and glided and hun^behind the pinons. The air 

 filled up with snowflakes. The landscape went delirious 

 in gray and white. Confusing, bewildering, uncanny; 

 everytliing set to whirling, changing and shifting. Fit 

 scene, fit elements, fit reception for him who would hunt 

 a phantom! " 



Thi'ough it all a whistle! Over it all a thump, thump! 

 A second whistle; then regular recurrence of receding 

 footfalls! 



In a moment I was beside the shaking pifion. The trail 

 was plain. In the moist snow lay the photograph. Left 

 hindfoot, inside half of hoof gone. loot large. Stride 

 magnificent. Item: at every stride a drop of blood size 

 of a pea. Could a phantom bleed? I know not. Had he 

 been shot? I am certain not. The drop of blood was too 

 tiny and regular; three inches each time behind the im- 

 ].irint of the broken hoof. Probably the thrust of a Span- 

 ish bayonet, gotten in the fog. 



I had retained enough idea of the coimtry to know that 

 the buck had started to the left, bound toward the top of 

 Baxter Peak; and I knew just enough of this pai'ticular 

 phantom to be sure that he would ckcle to the right, 

 around the top of the peak. Follow him? No. I would 

 go to the right and meet him. Beshrew me, Sir Phantom, 

 thought I, thy days are numbered. 



Well, perhaps they were numbered; but if so, I hadn't 

 got the combination. My plan betokened great intellec- 

 tual acumen on my part; but Hke many such plans, it 

 didn't work. Indeed, what plan could work against sub- 

 tlety preternatural, against cunning beyond the reach of 

 man? With silent footfall, with gun-stock guarded from 

 cartridge belt, with clothing carefully held back from any 

 rattling twig, I crawled along, a shadow myself among 

 the shadows, in pursuit of a shadow, and using every art 

 which teacliing or experience had ^iven me. 



An hour passed. My hope ran high. It was near time 

 for the meeting and I "had the wind. Useless! By some 

 imsotmded prescience my presence became kno\vn. Again 

 the whistle of derision! Again the vanishing, not of a 

 form, but of the indications of the form. 



I followed the buck now. The fog made him reckless. 

 I started him half a dozen times, but I never saw him. 

 His trail could not be mistaken, for at every fresh start 

 the tiny drop of blood broke out afresh. Again the mvs- 

 terious creature earned his title. He was above me, be- 

 low me, behind me, all aroimd me. He was everywhejro. 

 But he clung with pertinacity to the top of the peak, and 

 every forty minutes. Puck-like, he laid a gii-dle about it 

 and interlaced it with broken hoof marks and tiny drops 

 of blood. I could see where he stood and stamped and 

 listened; I could see where he took alarm and took leave; 

 I could see his long bounds, his diminishing strides, his 

 crooked contented wanderings, but I could not see him. 

 Was be indeed invisible? The idea grew upon me. 



