112 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Aug. 10, 1895. 



LOST IN THE SWAMPS.-II. 



The cabin belonged to Jobn Acree, a stare splitter, who 

 was absent, but the young man whom he had engaged as 

 helper took us in and made us at home. The appurte- 

 nances were of course primitive, and the stock of pro- 

 visions was limited; but Albert did his best, and before 

 long we were seated before a meal of hot biscuits and 

 coffee, without sugar. For butter we had the bubbling 

 grease of tried-out pork, with "long sweetenin' " for gar- 

 nishment. It was the best meal I ever ate. 



Supper was scarcely over when a horn sounded cn the 

 edge of. the clearing, and in came Green, George and 

 Uncle Dan. They had been in camp at the Beaver Pond, 

 miles from the Twin Sisters, but had strayed away too far 

 in the day's hunt to return that night; so our meeting was 

 a coincidence. They congratulated us on our escape from 

 a comfortless night, but had little to say about the fellow 

 who had deliberately abandoned them as well as us. 

 That night they camped near the cabin. In the morning 

 George and Dan started for town in their light wagon to 

 get provisions and fetch us our outfit. 



The rest of us spent the day in lazy fashion. The wagon 

 did not appear by supper time. Night fell, and we grew 

 a little anxious. Finally from afar off we heard the faint 

 note of a hunter's horn. 



"They're lost," exclaimed Green. 



Albert blew a sturdy answer from the doorway. They 

 heard us, and blasts were interchanged at frequent inter- 

 vals; but the sound of a horn several miles off is very de- 

 ceptive, and it was soon plain that they were making no 

 headway toward the clearing. 



"We must go to them." 



Barnes, being six inches taller than any of us, strapped 

 the lantern to his head, and we struck out into the forest 

 in single file, guided by the signals of the horn. We were 

 an hour or more reaching the wagon Then there was 

 laughter and chaffing on the return, until some one turned 

 to Albert and asked for directions. 



"Now you've got me. I've only been here a week, and 

 I don't know any more than you do about where the clear- 

 ing lies from here." 



We sought hither and thither in the darkness for a trail 

 or a line of blaze; but finally had to halt and confess that 

 we were lost. I had a compass, but it might as well have 

 been a rag baby, for we did not knew whether the cabin 

 was north, east or south of us. 



Uncle Dan laughed. "Well, boys, it looks like a dry 

 camp for to-night. We may as well unhitch and make the 

 best of it." 



George had been sounding the horn vigorously, and 

 just as we were about to give up for the night an answer 

 came. Acree's only neighbor — a hunter, some milrs 

 away — had heard us and was coming with lantern, horn 

 and hounds. 



He found us and led us back to the clearing. It was 

 long past midnight when the last story was told, and we 

 fell asleep around the camp-fire. 



The next morning we were to have a deer drive. It 

 was arranged that each of us should go off for a little still- 

 hunt on his own hook and turn up at his proper stand by 

 8 o'clock; then the hounds would be turned loose and 

 Green would follow them. 



What the other men did I do not know; but my own 

 plans were quickly formed. I would set my compass, 

 hunt on down toward Whirl Creek, make a detour to the 

 east and return diagonally to the clearing. It was un- 

 necessary to bother with a hatchet and blaze away, for I 

 could not wander very far in the time allotted me, nor 

 could I hunt while making so much noise. So I watched 

 the compass faithfully for a while and kept a reasonably 

 straight course. 



But deer sign was plentiful in the overflow, and fresh. 

 The tracks of one big buck in particular led me over a 

 devious course. He was moving deliberately and I 

 might jump him any moment. The compass became a 

 nuisance. Here his trail meets that of two does — or are 

 they hogs? No, the sharply pointed toes tell the story. I 

 spend fifteen minutes getting around a piece of cover 

 formed by drift logs, another fifteen minutes getting to 

 leeward of a patch of switch cane into which the buck's 

 tracks led. Other tracks are numerous and all made this 

 morning, but I want the maker of those big ones. 



And so the time slipped away, quickly but stealthily, 

 like the white flags that occasionally appeared, only to 

 baffle a shot. Unwillingly I turned at last toward the 

 upland. It was further off than I had calculated, and 

 when reached, the question was: East or west? Well, I 

 would go east a mile or two, and then if the clearing did 

 not turn up, I would retrace my steps and could not miss 

 it. The clearing was not to the east. I returned west- 

 ward, and in three-quarters of an hour was on the banks 

 of a lake which I had never seen before. 



Lost again. 



I sat down and lit my pipe, but the more I thought the 

 thing over the worse my reasoning became entangled, and 

 all on account of that confounded lake. It seemed to me 

 that, for a stranger, the dense upland forest was more 

 hopeless than the overflow, because in the overflow there 

 were watercourses, whereas the upland was level and 

 dry as a prairie, and showed nothing but one eternal 

 sameness m every direction. 



Well, the drive would have to get along without me. I 

 could knock off a squirrel's head with the .45, catch a fish 

 in the lake (there was hook and line in my wallet), smoke 

 and wait for somebody to find me. At intervals I fired 

 off the hunter's grand hailing sign of distress and waited. 

 Finally there was a spiteful little crack near by. 



"That is Barnes, for there isn't another .22 in this part 

 of Arkansas." 



I arose and soon met him. 



"What were you shooting at?" he added. 



"Oh, squirrels; but I can't hit anything this morning." 



"We are too late for the drive." 



"Yes; but I was following the biggeBt buck you ever saw 

 tracks of." 



"Have you heard the hounds?" 

 "No." 



' 'Neither have I. Those fellows have got off after squir- 

 rels and changed their minds." 



Later in the day, when we were lounging in front of the 

 cabin, I remarked to him: "Say, Barnes, my conscience 



pricks me. I was lost this morning when you ran across 

 me." 



"I knew it, and was looking for you." 

 "Then you knew that I was lying about those squir- 

 rels." 



"Of course, we can all lie a little now and then." 



Perhaps he was disgusted by the outcome of the drive 

 that didn't come off, or perhaps, as a veteran still-hunter, 

 he chuckled over it; but at any rate he went off by himself 

 shoitly after lunch. 



At supper time there was no Barnes. It grew very 

 dark in the clearing, for the moon rose late at that season, 

 and we could only imagine the intensity of that darkness 

 through which the long hunter must be groping down in 



UNCLE DAN. 



the overflow. Finally Dan stopped our conversation with 

 a sharp command : "Hark!"' 



We listened. Presently we heard from far down in the 

 overflow a long-drawn, infernal howl — then another — and 

 another. 



"They're circling in a pack. Barnes may have trouble 

 on his hands." 



Then we heard, faintly, the high-pitched whoop that 

 the hunter knows will carry further than any other note 

 in a man's register. 



"Blow the horn, George; it's too dark for him down 

 therp, and he's lost." 



"Hadn't we better go after him?' I suggested. "He 

 may have sprained an ankle, or met with some other ac- 

 cident." 



"Wait a bit, and see." 



His answers to the horn shifted gradually to the east, 



acree's cabin. 



then north, and in half an hour he stalked unconcernedly 

 into camp, puffing under the weight of a pair of coons. 



That night, after the panther stories were told, I turned 

 to the old man and asked: "Uncle Da,n, what would you 

 do if you got lost in the overflow, and night came on, 

 and you had nothing to eat?" 



He smiled and said: "I reckon I'd crawl into a hol- 

 low tree and think of the days at Murfreesboro, when we 

 were hungry and shot at." 



Unconsciously he raised a shattered hand to support 

 his rusty gun. 



Poor old Uncle Dan! Long years of war; defeat; 

 maimed by a minie bullet; hunting squirrels for a living; 

 yet with only a smile for the past, and for anything to 

 come. 



The next morning at daybreak Barnes and I were off 

 for a long tramp. 



"I want you to get the lay of the land around here be- 

 fore you undertake any still-hunting by your lonesome," 

 he remarked, "and I want you to get over that habit of 

 expecting meals in the middle of the day; so you can just 

 leave that little bag in camp. To-day we must see what 

 the blue cane is like. Tou won't know much about the 

 swamps until you have studied a canebrake." 



By noon we reached the blue cane. Before us was a 

 wall of fishpoles living in such exceeding close com- 

 munion that they resent intrusion from all outsiders 

 larger than a chigre {him I will back to go anywhere, 

 and if he does not frequent the cane it is only because he 

 likes grass better). This fraternity was bound together 

 by such a tangle of interwoven vines and briars, creepers 

 and tendrils, and everything else that is twisty and 

 thorny, that even the obstinacy of that perverse creature 

 the razor-back hog softens before it, and piggy seeks a 

 slash. Now the funny thing about those fishpoles is that 

 they have leaves. I was totally unprepared for this rev- 

 elation, and coming thus buck up against a brand new 

 fact it dumbfounded me. Yes, fishpoles on their native 

 soil have leaves. 



We entered the brake boldly, proceeded bravely, fought 

 desperately, and died game (no we didn't — that was an- 

 other time—I'm getting two stories mixed up). In the 

 fullness of Arkansas time we emerged; and you can 

 qualify that with any adjective that suits you— I did. 



Subsequent experience in the brakes has confirmed my 

 first impression, that they offer advantages for getting lost 

 and staying so which no other North American real estate 

 can afford. Once let a man enter blue cane, and he is 

 alone with his Maker. The parted reeds close behind 

 him like water over a sinking ship. Before, behind and 

 all about him there is nothing but cane. He cannot lift a 

 finger without pressing cane. Below him is a bed of 

 cane; above him cane; for the leaf y tops fairly shut out 

 the light of heaven. In any direction that he may turn 

 his eyes cannot pierce six fett. He moves on; it is cane, 

 cane. His strength is quickly spent against the evpr- 

 yielding but ever-rebounding cane. He seeks an altitude, 

 an opening, anything to give him bearings; there is none. 

 There is nothing to climb for an outlook, nothing to escape 

 by detours — nothing but cane. He is lost; and can defy 

 the very powers of a bonding agency ever to find him. 



Once I read somewhere what purported to be an old 

 Arkansas bear hunter's recipe for navigating a canebrake. 

 He said: "Cut the longest and stiff est cane that you can 

 find, straddle it as a boy dors a broomstick, andgitep; the 

 cane will keep you from walking in a circle." 



Well, I thought I could see the point, and you know 

 that theory and practice occasionally agree. So the first 

 time that I struck blue cane by myself I cut a big fellow, 

 straddled him and advanced, gun in one hand and steed 

 in the other. By dint of hard work and acrobatics I 

 must have ridden that pole as much as sixty feet. Then 

 I gave it up and retreated. The recipe is a good one. A 

 cane straddled according to specifications will keep a 

 man from walking in a circle, or anywhere else, in a 

 brake. 



Barnes would have died if he had heard of that per- 

 formance; so I never told him. 



We walked and walked. Somehow that notion about 

 lunch hour would not leave my head. In all previous 

 adventures by flood and field I had contrived to carry at 

 least a few hard tack about my person, and the haoit re- 

 belled against correction. I was following my leader, 

 and, as usual, looking for persimmons, when Barnes 

 whispered: 



"Shoot, shoot!" 



Up rose a fine old buck, so gracefully that the move- 

 ment seemed deliberate, almost lazy. I could not fire 

 without stepping aside, for my companion was in the 

 way, and when this was done the buck had vanished in 

 the cane. 



The moist ground of the overflow is a capital place for 

 studying tracks, and we had abundant opportunities, as 

 overcup mast was abundant: but only the saucy flutter 

 of distant flags rewarded us that afternoon. 



"Well, don't be disappointed," counseled the long- 

 legged man. "You can see how plentiful the deer are 

 and how easy it will be to get all you have any business 

 to shoot, but we must walk too fast for hunting to-day, 

 as we are out for a different purpose." 



We reached the mouth of Whirl Creek. Suddenly 

 Barnes paused, looking at the ground. He paused so 

 long and earnestly that I reached for the old "Missouri 

 meerschaum" and sought a dry spot to sit down on. 

 Finally he remarked: "See here, sonny, didn't you say 

 something the other day about losing a bear?" 



"Yep." 



"And didn't I promise to show you bear sign?" 

 "Yep." 



"Well, how does this suit you?" 



Sure tnough, there in the moist earth, clear as a plaster 

 mould, was a great sprawling track. Never before was 

 mud so fascinating. 



"Well, sonny, are you stilt yearning for bear? ' 



Was I still yearning for bear? Well, why had I been 

 toting a 10-pound gun all this time? That gun, my very 

 latest pride and darling, had worn my shoulders to the 

 quick, and now it was rubbing skin off the back of my 

 neck. It was a big and brutal .45-70, loaded with expand- 

 ing bullets, and had yet to be fired at anything that it 

 didn't make a mess of. Did I want bear? Well, didn't 

 1? Conventional story-telling would have me suddenly 

 grow pale and qualmish, but this is a true story, every 

 word of it. 



"Now pardy, don't ask me such a fool question. What 

 am I here for, with twenty rounds of ammunition? Run 

 right along and bring that bear in here and give us an in- 

 troduction." 



But my hardihood did not make the slightest impres- 

 sion. It is not pleasant to record your friend's shortcom- 

 ings, but Barnes didn't do anything of the sort. To put it 

 mildly, I was disappointed in him, and we moved on for 

 some time in silence. 



But no man of a sociable disposition can stand that sort 

 of thing very long, and at last curiosity got the better of 

 me. 



"Say, Barnes, how old was that bear track?" 

 He grinned. 

 "About a year." 



"Why, you weather-beater old humbug! Didn't you 

 tell me that the water comes in here 12ft. deep and washes 

 out; " 



"Certainly, but it doesn't wash tracks off an island." 

 "Was that an island?" 

 "Hadn't you just climbed up the bank?" 

 "Oh, yes; but aren't there any bears around here 

 now?" 



"There were plenty of them the last time I was here, 

 anl I'm disappointei in not fiading sign to-day. They 

 must be in the cane." 



