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the prairie. In the bewilderment and distracted exdte- 
ment I shouted, as I scrambled in the grass, "Catch him !" 
Poor little Joe, qiiite as disconcerted as I, dashed away in 
the dark in pursuit of the tinkling bell on the old horse's 
neck, and that rattling, clattering guide soon led him far 
beyond niy hearing, while I stood panting, listening 
there in the dark. 
"Hang such ill-luck!" I thought, and began groping 
about for the lantern, having but half sense of what direc- 
tion I last heard it rattle; but presently I stumbled over 
it, and then discovered that all the .matches were in the 
wallet on the mare, as was %vaLer, pipe, tobacco. Very evi- 
dently I was hove-to until morning. I must not leave 
Briscoe's gun. Once lose the location, I might be days 
finding it again. My horn was gone, too; no chance of 
notifying Briscoe that way. Ah-ha! the very idea; iire 
signal guns. I have four loaded shells in my pocket, there 
is still one in the gun. Yes. T'll hunt the gun up. Let's 
.see. Humph! Fll just have to crawl around and feel for 
it. I must find it. So to work I weni, with a strong- 
heart and an upper lip as stiff as a car bumper. It wa.s 
goiug to be a bit tedious, of course, crawling around and 
ai-ound in enlarging circles through that tall, dank grass, 
but it must be done and persevered in imtil the gun is 
found. 
In a very little while, on all-fours, carefully exploring 
with my hands every foot of the soggy ground. I heard 
something — not a boisterous racket at all — just in front 
of me on the ground; no vague conjectures troubled me 
as to what caused it; my Florida senses caught on in- 
stantly; they had heai-d the like before, and marked it sure 
for the dry, husky, blowing hiss of a great, scaly, stumped- 
taii moccasin snake. 
As the situation became apparent I was struck with 
the inappropriateness of my employment. Parts of my 
philosophical anatomy ceased crawling at once. The 
flesh of me kept at it for dear life; but my old bones and 
clothes anchored where they were. Cassabianca's heroic 
regard for parental injunction Avas mild and watery com- 
pared with the resolute steadfastness with which the sigh 
of that old serpent inspired me. 
Radical change of circumstances usually demand cor- 
responding change of conduct. The hiss of that scaly- 
old reptile instantly dispelled from my mind the urgency 
of firing signal guns. It seemed so much more appro- 
priate to wait. I remembered to have heard it reliably 
stated that "all things come to him who waits.'' Yes, 
clearly, I'd wait. Presently came the nastly reflection that 
with "aH" the things likely to "come" while I patised 
there in the gloomy moisture, that old stumptail might 
naturally wriggle along with the rest, and my bowels lit- 
erally yearned for some or any place or thing of res.cue. 
Overhead the sky was superbly- beautiful. Low' on its 
southern wall was reared the curved outline of the great 
scorpi. High in the east twinkled on the broad shoulder 
of the Bull the mistic Plaides, and blazed with seeming 
unusual gratideur the bands of mighty Orion. Gazing 
thoughtfully at such manifestations of order, I had quite 
forgotten the circumstances of my situation, when there 
fell faintly on my ear, coming from the eastward, toward 
the timber, the sound of a whining yelp. A gentle breeze 
had risen and was blowing steadily in that direction. 
Yep-yap-yap-yep, yep-p-p, came again up the wind. 
•■'H— m," thought I; "coyotes. Certainly a nice-assorted 
lot of stuff 'comes' to a fellow having to 'wait' after bed- 
time in a Texas prairie." Shortly arose, a little way be- 
yond, and southerly of my snake-fast position, satisfied 
me that "old Blue Light" was setting up the funeral 
meats there away. What a shame to have bowled over so 
superb a kill and sit there in the dark, like a frog on a 
tussock and hsten to those snarling varlets rend it, Hun- 
ter's impulse seized me to rush in, drive them off and 
rescue my quarry, but the vision of old forked tongue 
Ijdng coiled near by, perhaps in very reach of me, watch- 
ing me, silently, flashed athwart my mind, and as in- 
stantly I froze solid to the ground I sat upon. No, I 
believed I'd go right on waiting. Daylight was certainly 
to be numbered among "all things"; its turn would come 
presently. Indeed, so fixed were my staying qualities 
whenever I recalled that ominous, wheezy hiss, that had 
the very prairie resolved itself into a colossal broncho 
and giddily bucked itself blind, 'twould scarcely haA'e jos- 
tled me. , 
Hark! Briscoe's, horn, quite three miles away, to the 
northeastward. "At the camp," I muttered, "where, not 
finding us, he blows his horn to guide us there." Well, 
I coidd not answer; but those measly coyotes did. After 
some time the old Texan fired both barrels of his gun 
in quick succession, as signals. "Poor, anxious old chap," 
I thought, how lonely and disconsolate he must be there 
in camp, with only a fire, boy, two horses, pipes, tobacco 
and his gun. I was seriously tempted to go at once to 
his relief; yet I did not. 
Finally the morning star had climbed away up the 
eastern sky. Gray tints began capping the timber line 
thereaway. In a little while I arose gingerly from my 
wet lair and cautiously stretching cramped limbs, peered 
about as best I could in the dim light, and there, not 5ft. 
away, lay the lost gun. Getting quickly hold of it, with 
lamp in other hand, I picked my way, watching eagerly 
for snakes, toward the northeast. 
As the sun began to show at the point where Houston 
road entered the timber, I came upon Briscoe and httle 
Hal riding out in search of Joe and myself. 
"Where's the boy and the horses?" he cried, anxiously. 
"Up about Waco by this time,"I answered, "if they have 
kept the gait and direction they were going when last f 
heard from them." T greatly relieved him and amused 
him by my account of what had befallen ua. 
"They are likely in Houston, at any rate," he said. 
"Well, certainly you have passed a trying night, and you 
show it. Get on my horse. I'll mount Hal's and take 
him behind me. Let's get to camp. A little snake^medi- 
cine and some coffee will pull you together again." 
"Look yonder!" cried Hal. "There is Joe and a man." 
There coming briskly along the road, sure enough, wn-^ 
Joseph and a ranchman, the latter leading the old horse 
that had so unceremoniously deserted me the night before. 
"Hello, Briscoe!" cried the newcomer, familiarly. "I'm 
a-fetchmg back part of your crowd what kinder got 
strayed, seems like." . t 1 1 
"Good morning, Hudnel, answered Briscoe. 1 thank 
you heartily for doing it; but where did you find them.''" 
"Find them?" Why, they kinder found me. They come 
a-tearixig up to my corral la.-. ■:::^hi .r.-.r: my whole cav- 
illard a-leading of 'uril. I 'lowed sotrie one or nuther Was 
after my stock, and I tumbled out with my Winchester. 
'Fore I sed what to p'int at I beared what 'peared like a 
chile a-hallowing, and the fuss thing I knowed this here 
little chap rid' right up to me. I knowed that thar pied 
mare for your'n time I seed her, and kinder ketched on 
to something being wrong wid you .somewheres or 
nuther. I tuck the little chap in the house, and when he 
g'pt sorter quiet Hke — fer he were powerful shuck tip — he 
tole me 'bout whar you wus, and this here horse a-gitting 
away from that thar gentleman, and him a-following of 
the bell till they run into my stock of horses, what was 
a-grazing in the per-rai-ry, and then I knowed jes' how 
hit was, and soon's it come day we sot out to find you." 
"Well, I thank you for your kindness. This is my 
friend, Mr. Long. Come, ride to camp with us at the 
lake, down here. We will have some breakfast and talk 
it all over. And Joe, my boy, I'm certainly relieved to 
find you safe and sound." 
"Oh, I'm all right now, sir," cried Joe, "and I would 
not take $50 for the experience; but I'll tell you, that run 
in the dark last night got me. I declare. Uncle 'Menus, • 
before we stopped. I began to think we'd go all the way 
back to Alabama." 
While having breakfast we exchanged accounts of our- 
•selves during the night. Briscoe had had two shots, and 
had knocked down a handsome young buck, which now 
hung by a gambling stick to a limb hard by. 
"Where's the deer Mr. Long says he lied up behind 
you, Joe?" queried the inquisitive Hal. 
"Shucks, hoy, I expect the coyotes have licked her old ■ 
bones before this." replied my man Sancho. "One end 
of her broke loose and swung down while I was riding 
after that bell. I was not strong enough to right her up 
again without dismounting, and I could not stop for that, 
so I cut the other end loose and let her drop. Was I 
right, Mr. Long?" 
"Decidedly," I answered. I was ashamed of the stupid 
way in which I murdered that' old doe, and did not want 
to see her again. 
'T expect the varmints 'bout here'll come to think a 
sight of you, Kernel," laughingly said our new acquain- 
tance, Hudneli, to me, "ther way you draps deers 'round 
ifi ther grass fur'm. I reckin they thinks hit a plum 
miricle. Ef you don't mind, some of them hunters thar in 
town'll hear of it, and git to naming of you 'bout hit." 
'"Capital." said Briscoe. "T must give that to Tallia- 
ferro." 
Hudneli had known of occurrences similar to that of 
the buck's behavior the night before. He thought it prob- 
able that the creature, lying down in tlie grass in front 
of me, startled by the report of the gun so near, had 
became bewildered by the smoke and sulphurous fumes, 
and had naturally dashed toward the light. 
To avoid an exchange of experiences and the tiierciless 
guying he would have subjected me to, I never dared ask 
Talliaferro whether he and Hornberger's terrier had treed 
a Tom in the back alley. R. C. Lox*;. 
The Old Trapper. 
Primitito instincts die hard. Every now and then we 
see them cropping out in the modern, highly civilized 
man. as bedrock crops out here and there on the shorn 
lawns of your fine estates in the suburbs. I love to meet 
a man who has some of the spicy sediment of savagery 
in him yet — a man who is not entirelj- tamed and do- 
mesticated and conventionalized; who cannot entirely 
strip himself loose from nature, but clings to her at some 
point, and retains a vital connection with her all his 
days. I would give a whole city full of mere metropoli- 
tans for one of him. 
Such a man is the old trapper of the countryside. By 
profession he may be a farmer or a shoemaker or a black- 
smith or a schoolmaster, or even postmaster ; but by na- 
ture and the zest of the heart he is still a hunter and a 
man of the woods. The unquenchable love of the primi- 
tive and wild burns clear within him. There is some- 
thing distinctly religious in his devotion. He is a na- 
ture-worshiper, a true jiantheist. a man who finds God in 
every aspect and phenomenon of the outer world. Noth- 
ing less can account for his ardor to be in the woods, an 
ardor that even age cannot cool, but which seems to in- 
crease within him as his beard whitens and his strength 
declines. The old trapper surely finds some altar in 
the woods, upon which he burns the fat of his victims, 
and before which he swings his censer of musk. Fur is 
not what tempts him, nor yet meat. Higher gods than 
those of purse and belly inspire his avocation and attend 
him to his traps and snares. 
You will scarcely find a village or a town, or even a 
city, anywhere, that has not its representative old trap- 
per — one man at least, among the utilitarian many, who 
still finds a romantic charm in going to the woods, tast- 
ing wild berries and wild flavors of all sorts, and match- 
ing his wits and wiles against those of cunning woodland 
creatures. How recognizable is his figure — that gentle, 
old, grizzled face, under the slouched hat; the blue eyes 
a little dimmed, but wide-awake and observing still; the 
mouth, not hard and set, as is apt to be the case with 
old men. but relaxed and peaceful as the lips of a child; 
the slightly stooping, spare figure, dressed in soft curves 
and hues of old, faded, accustomed clothes; the feet, in 
dusty, brfck-red boots, leisurely of step, yet sturdy and 
firm"; the bunch of steel traps or of pelts hanging from 
the left hand ; the pipe, perpetually alight, as vestal fires, 
leaving its rank fragrance all along the village street. 
Everybody knows the old trapper, and loves him — 
ospecially the boys. What a lore is his, not to be found 
in books! What secrets of forest, stream and air! And 
it is all of his own getting, written by the stylus of ex- 
perience deep in his heart and mind. As Sydney Smith 
said of Macaulay— though in a very different sense— "He 
is a book in breeches;" but not everyone can read him; 
like the best of books, he is only to be read by those who- 
love him. 
When I was a boy I counted it better than an hour in 
fairyland or amid the glamor of medieval romance to sit 
down with the old trapper on some bank under the trees 
or by the river, and listen to his woodland lore. Then it 
was that, for once, I forgot morning, evening, and the 
dinner hour. I hung upon the old man's slow, mumbling 
words, and leaned to catch them till my head, resting 
...>,«,^,^^.tta;?^=pyr-^.,j^n>..-'--:vw--^^^ -„ , „ . 
Upon palm and elbow, was almost pillowed in his lap. I 
fed my eyes on the old, wistful face and blue eyes, look- 
ing so far away that I could not believe the trapper was 
talking to me, and drank the strea.m of story and of fact 
that fell slowly, drop by drop, from the lips of the oracle. 
Because I loved the old man, he opened the book of 
his life and his heart to me, and enraptured me. He told 
me of all the strange things he had seen in the woods — 
things he could not account for, things terrible to ffle in 
their mystery, fascinating beyond any romance. He told 
me of tangible dangers met and overcome in the days 
of his youth; encounters with the savage wild beasts that 
then roamed the woods; perils by the elements, by 
storms and floods and fierce weather; perils from getting 
lost in the woods, and wandering without food, and sleep- 
ing without shelter or protection at night. More fas- 
cinating still, he told me how to set and bait traps, how 
to make snares and dead-falls, how to skin animals and 
birds and stretch and cure their pelts. He told me how 
to deceive the wily fox, and find the haunt of the rare 
mink, and catch muskrats in submerged barrels, and lure, 
hawks into traps set upon poles. He told me how to 
tell north from south by the trees, how to build a camp 
of boughs, how to make a fire in a soaking rain and 
keep it burning all night. But if I should recount all the 
things the old trapper taught me I should be writing out 
his book, the book of his long, loving, observant life. 
And that would be ri.ght neither to him nOT the prin 
ter. 
Perhaps not every day,; but twice or thrice a weekf in 
the fall and winter and early spring, you may see the old 
trapper going his way- beyond the skirts of the village, 
a quiet, unobtrusive figure. Soon he leaves the highway, 
to follow the course of the brook, or cross a meadow to 
the woods. No one considers him a trespasser, nor 
does he ever seerri ?put of place, or going about other 
than his rightful (business. All paths are open to 
him, and he enjoysjalways as a kind of inalienable priv- 
ilege the freedom of the country. Every farmer knows 
that, when the oldf trapper lets down a bar, he will put 
it back in place bejter than he found it; and if a barbed 
wire fence proves ioo close-set for him, instead of pull- 
ing a strand frorn'^the post, he will go far and patiently 
until he finds a ^toUow where he can crawl under the 
bottom wire. He- is not of the lawless, vindictive class, 
for whom trespassing signs are intended. All he asks 
is his own divine right in God's country — to walk harm- 
lessly over it, interfering with no man's rights and dam- 
aging no man's property. 
It is with true neighborly pleasure that the village or 
town folk see the old trapper coming home, at evening, 
with his modest spoils. He and his habitation and his 
ways are one of tl'ie institutions of the community, Truly, 
a country town without an old trapper or hunter is an 
anomalous, half-fledged place, lacking in local character, 
picturesqueness and vital connection with the past — that 
primitive past from which it has, after all, but lately 
emerged. So long as woods and streams survive, and are 
peopled by wild creatures, so long will the trapper's 
function be one of the straight paths between man in the 
civilized community and God in the free, mysterious, un- 
spoiled woods. James Buckham. 
Real Life in the Woods. 
Manv yeats jsgO a bark canoe iSft. long was paddled 
down Lake Chahiplain from the north. It contained an 
entire Indian family and all their worldly - possessions.' 
They found a home among the Adirondacks, and one of 
them still lives there. For years he was an expert guide; 
but age and ill health have disqualified him for that ser- 
vice. Farming and basket making now occupy most of 
his hours of labor. The writer meets him every summer, 
and many an hour has been passed pleasantly listening to 
his tales of early days. Last summer he told of an ex- 
perience which few sportsmen of to-day would like to 
share. "With a brother — both young men — he went into 
the great woods of Canada for a nine months' hunting- 
trip. They carried no provisions whatever, having re- 
solved to live on game. Sometimes they hunted together, 
and sometimes were separated for days, but wherever 
tliey went each knew 
"His faithful dog stiouki bear him company." 
Generally they camped together, but worked apart. As 
their object was fur for the markets, they would stay 
in one region till it was well worked and then move their 
camp to some new and unhunted locality. .At one time 
they did not taste food for four days. The snow was 
deep and the weather unfavorable to hunting. They 
hunted diligently, but could not secure even a partridge. 
Though well seasoned and hardy, the continuous tramp- 
ing began to tell on their unfed bodies. At length, in a 
sort of desperation, my inform,ant went a long way from 
camp to a ridge, where it seemed likely moose might be 
found. He struck a track and followed it until he wound- 
ed tlie animal. Then the frail led toward camp, and hope 
became dominant. Finally the moose lay down \h deep 
snow and the Indian carefully worked his way up to- 
within a few feet, determined that when he fired a-^ain the 
moose should not arise — and he didn't! The brother was 
slowly returning empty-handed to camp. He heard the 
shot and felt that relief was at hand. He brought a ket- 
tle, and soon a savory broth was cooking- oyer the fire. 
After their long abstinence, those men of the woods 
knew better than to eat meal at first. They taok broth, 
and but little of that until their systems began to rally. 
But then, how they did eat! They camped by that moose 
and cooked and ate and rested and recruited for a whole 
week. Then they were again ready for business. Dur- 
ing the entire nine months they ta.sted no food but the 
wild meat of the forest. They were not ,sick a day, and 
were very successful in securing fur. The catch was sold 
for something like $2,000. 
When they came out of the woods and reached a hotel 
cwvilized cooking was distasteful, and good bread seenietli 
hardly fit to eat. 
Some time will ■give you another chapter of the old 
man's experience. Juvenal. 
Thp Forest and Stream is put to press each .wepk cm Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reach us at the 
latest by Monday and as much earlier as prs^cticabir 
