Jan. 7, 1892.J 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



S 



resting and then pass on, haunting the shores as silently 

 as a ghost, save when he cast a trap and tally into his 

 boat or chopped a new notch in a log or hailed a brother 

 trapper to learn his luck. 



As the day waned and the wind died, the still water 

 turned to gold with the reflections of the sunset sky, then 

 in the twilight of shadows, turned to a black waste, save 

 where the first stars were mirrored or a muskrat's wake 

 seamed it with a streak of silver. Then as the shadow of 

 the world crept up the eastern sky. the farmstead lights 

 began to twinkle along the distant highway, and our own 

 shone out to guide us homeward. 



No feat performed with the old gun is more vividly re- 

 membered than the killing of my first fox. 



T recall the even whiteness of the snow, shadowless 

 under the dull December sky, the first burst of the 

 hound's music, how it came crashing nearer, while my 

 throbbing heart heat time to it, the glimpse of reynard'a 

 tawny fur flashing through the haze of underbrush, then 

 disclosed for a moment after my hasty shot, writhing in 

 the snow, then up and off, at first so slowly that I could 

 almost lay hand on him, gaining on me, till as the dogs 

 came up and passed me he went out of sight beyond a 

 ridge and left me breathless and lamenting. 



When my companion reached me the woods were silent 

 tut for the voices of the chickadees that eurioudy attended 



The inexorable hand of time is not altogether unkind; 

 it wounds, but with a later touch it heals; it takes a way, 

 but in some way makes compensation. 



Ferris bubgh, Vt. ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 



"US BOYS." 



"TDACK in the 50s" I lived in Muscatine, la. At that 

 JD time, except in a thin belt along the Mississippi 

 and some of the larger streams, settlements were few and 

 far between, and, as a consequence, game of all kinds was 

 abundant. 



Prairie chickens were so thick that they were a serious 

 nuisance to the. farmers. About the first money I ever 

 earned was the munificent (so it seemed to me then) sti- 

 pend of 10 cents a day, from my father's and my friend, 

 Ivlr. Kendvick, for keeping these birds away from Ms 

 wheat shocks while the grain was waiting to lie flailed 

 out. 



Wild pigeons were even a worse evil in their annual 

 migrations— scratching up the new-sown seed in the spring 

 and devastating the cornfields in the fall. I have seen 

 them so thick in Ogilvie's Woods, adjacent to the village 

 corporation line, that myself and chums— Hal Paine, 

 Charlie Ogilvie and George Warfiekl— have more than 



my brother, two years older, and myself caught one, i. e., 

 he caught it, while I danced around on the log and yelled, 

 which was so large that to bring it home we had to run 

 a stick through its gills, and thus carry it suspended be- 

 tween us. Even then its tail dragged on the ground, as I 

 recall distinctly, from the fact that, owing to the short- 

 ness of the stick, and my being behind, I several times 

 stepped on it, and once with such disastrous effect, owing 

 to its slipperiness, as to throw me headlong in the sandy 

 road with the big fish a-toj) of me, which caused my 

 brother to call out,"Confound it, Hen, what do you want 

 to climb him. for? He ain't got no bird's nest in his 

 head I" alluding to my propensity for "shinning" up every 

 tree which I thought might yield an addition to my col- 

 lection of birds' eggs. When, after much toil and sweat, 

 and boyish cuss-words, such as ' 'dog-gone it" and "darn 

 it all," we had safely conveyed our prize home, we of 

 course had to show it to French Joe, a red-shirted demi- 

 god from that far-off Olympus, "up the river," who came 

 down occasionally from his celestial abode in charge of 

 a "run of logs," and graciously condescended to accept 

 from his boyish worshippers votive offerings of tobacco, 

 cigars and "pop" (strange to say, he would not touch 

 whisky), giving us in return strange tales of that en- 

 chanted country whence he hailed. When that oracle 

 Haw the fish he declared, "Dat no pike: dat a ," as 



us. Had the dogs stopped, or gone out of hearing under 

 the mountain side? 



Getting first to the brink of the cliff my friend looked 

 down, then shouted back to me, "They've got him!" and 

 we with a triumphant cheer made the woods ring with 

 wilder echoes than the hounds had awakened. 



How small and to what little purpose were these 

 achievements of our youthful ambitions, and yet how we 

 still glory in their accomplishment. I wonder if men 

 who have attained greatness do not look back to such 

 with a completer satisfaction than to great and later 

 triumphs, for success is most complete that brings most 

 one's own approval, and to those was given this reward. 



And now, old gun, I consign thee to thy old resting place 

 where thou wast wont to hang in thy flint-lock days, 

 when I was a bibbed and aproned toddler. 



I have grown garrulous over thee, as I recalled the 

 pleasures thou hast given me, pleasures that I shall never 

 taste again but in memory. 



Often have I hoped to relieve them in some measure 

 with my boy. and share with him the triumph of his 

 first successful shot, but this is denied me, groping in a 

 foK that beclouds aim. 



Thee nor other gun shall I ever shoot again, nor if I 

 might, could I find such sport as was to be had in the day 

 of thy first use? "Nesstnuk" spoke truly when he said, 

 "The game must go." 



There are too many shooters, too little cover, and yearly 

 the horde of the one increases, the acres of the* other 

 become fewer, and the game laws, game preserves and 

 game protectors cannot long avert the day of annihilation 

 or such poverty of its once populous haunts as to make 

 the pursuit of game a weariness to the flesh, a vexation 

 to the spirit. 



Well, if I have not had my share I have had my op- 

 portunity, and should be satisfied. It is a wonder to me 

 to find myself, without striving to reach this comfortable 

 state of mind, so content to be deprived of almost all the 

 pastimes that were once so dear to me. 



How few have the years been since I was looking for- 

 ward with impatient longing to this opening day of the 

 season, whose sports I was among the first to engage in 

 and the last to relinquish. 



To-day I hear the continuous fusilade along the marshes, 

 but am not cast down because I cannot be there, nor 

 envious of those whom the day is all that it once was to 

 me, 



A FAMILY ()!•' MULK DEER. 

 From a Photograph by Mr. Fie 1 Baker. 



once brought home a grain sack full of them, captured 

 by the primitive means of stones and clubs; for we were 

 none of us then the happy possessor of a gun. 



Bob White, too, was omnipresent, and many a covey 

 did "us boys" stone through the streets and into Hatch's 

 lumber yard, where we often made sad havoc of the 

 orderly board pile under which they took refuge, (If the 

 gallant cavalry general— as he afterward came to be in 

 the "late unpleasantness"— had half as much trouble with 

 his "boys in blue" as he did with "us boys" who made his 

 lumber yard our rendezvous and playground, he had his 

 hands full.) In the fall ducks, geese" and brant swarmed 

 in the ponds on the island below town and in the sloughs 

 of the "Illinoy bottom" across the river. 



Rabbits and squirrels, gray fox and black— the latter, 

 however, comparatively scarce— were too plentiful to be 

 considered. Deer were as "thick as hairs on a dog's 

 back," and many a luckless farmer smashed the third 

 commandment all to flinders as he gazed on his growing 

 wheat, trampled and eaten as though a drove of "Florida 

 "razorbaoks" had been in it. From October to May, 

 game of all kinds was a drug in the market, for we had 

 no railroads then; and during the winter, when the river 

 was frozen and the boats were laid up, venison, quail 

 and chickens could not be given away. I remember see- 

 ing a wagonload of game, among which were three or 

 four deer, dumped on a vaoant lot next our place — we 

 lived just outside the village limits— because the farmer 

 who brought them in could not sell them, and did not 

 consider them worth hauling home. Wolves were plenty 

 ten or fifteen miles back from the river, and farmers 

 found sheep raising impossible. Bear, I think, must have 

 been scarce, as I remember seeing but one— in the fall of 

 '54 I think it was— and he was brought into town, after 

 being killed, as a curiosity. 



And the fish! The waters literally swarmed with 

 them. Off the rafts in the river we caught "jack- 

 salmon," "white-bass," "channel-cat," and "spoonbills." 

 (I give the names as we knew them then) in Mad Creek, 

 "goggle-eyes," "punkies" and "yaller perch"— in the 

 "slough" which encircled the island, "sunnies" and 

 "gridirons" — and in the sloughs and ponds of the Illinois 

 bottom "yaller cats" and "pike." 



These pike grew to an enormous size, and I have won- 

 dered often since then if some of them might not have 

 been maskinonge. One remembrance especially inclines 

 me to this belief. The fall that I waa twelve years old 



near as I can recollect, "dusky" was the term he used, 

 which was probably my boyish rendition of "musky" — 

 his own contraction for miiskallonge. 



The next year, when I was 18, I took a trip, the recital 

 of which would be of no particular interest, except as 

 showing what a healthy youngster of that age can do 

 when he's had the proper" training. My father was ab- 

 sent on missionary work somewhere in the region of Des 

 Moines, about 150 miles to the west , and my mother being- 

 dead, I was left in charge of an uncle. My boyish dig- 

 nity received some affront, I do not now remember what 

 it was, and I made up my mind to leave him and seek 

 the shelter of the paternal arms. My particular "pard" 

 at that time was an Indian boy of about my own age — 

 Hawkeye, we called him, though the literal translation 

 of his cognomen was much less high sounding, being, I 

 believe, "Jumping Boy," whose family led a nomadic ex- 

 istence in that vicinity, having in some way escaped the 

 meshes of Uncle Sam's drag-net when their tribe, the 

 Kioways, were gathered up and removed to the reserva- 

 tion. Him I easily persuaded to be my companion in the 

 adventure, and we set out. My armament consisted of a 

 light double-barreled muzzleloading shotgun given me 

 by my father a short time before, and a common butcher 

 knife "sneaked" from the kitchen. Hawkeye clung to 

 the primitive weapon of his ancestors, the bow and arrow, 

 in the use of which he was wonderfully expert. A loaf 

 of bread, a roast duck and a piece of salt pork obtained 

 in the same manner as the butcher knife made up our 

 commissariat. I was for lugging'along some blankets, 

 but Hawkeye vetoed that luxury. ""No needum blank — 

 heap warm night (it was September); blank too much 

 dam heavy (Hawkeye in learning our language had 

 picked up certain "cuss words" which he used freely, 

 regarding them, I think, rather as intensive or descrip- 

 tive adjectives, than as savoring of profanity); get cold, 

 buildum fire." I yielded to his superior wisdom, and 

 though the organizer of the expedition, from that mo- 

 ment meekly yielded the leadership and assumed the 

 position or "high private in the rear rank 1 " 



Fortunately, there were no dime novels in those davs, 

 and my head was not stuffed with trash and romance." I 

 was merely a stout boy of 18 with a healthy body and 

 mind, setting out on an expedition which I knew would 

 have its fair share of discomforts, but which I did not 

 then and do not now look upon as extra hazardous, I 

 knew by experience that I could trust Hawkey e's wood- 



