482 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[DbC. 21, 1903, 
A Tennessee Outing* — L 
The combined effect of being the proud possessor of a 
brand new gun and the recipient of a cordial invitation 
from a friend to take his dog out for him proved too 
much for the conscioiis knowledge that my business 
needed me, and I went hunting. 
Among other good things in the section of Tennessee 
which is the writer's habitat, is an unvarying, beautiful 
spell of autumn weather, which this year even sur- 
passed itself. 
My destination, a small village in Hawkins county, 
near the marble quarry, from which comes the world- 
famous "Hawkins county red marble," was twelve miles 
from the railroad by the report of the most prejudiced 
and eighteen miles by those of the old inhabitant of the 
genus africanus, who vowed he spoke from an experi- 
ence of many years of driving the road. 
Jack was the name of my friend's dog, a big, sHlti, 
rangy setter, with all sorts of promising points and as 
kind and gentlemanly a specimen of the dog tribe as I 
have ever known. From the time I met him first and 
slapped his flanks until head and tail met in a paroxy.sm 
of joy and pulled his long, silky ears, until his kindly 
brown eyes grew soft with delight of being loved, we 
were friends. 
Settled on the train for our forty-mile ride, I went for- 
ward to the baggage car to see that he was safely placed, 
and not worrying over the confusion incident to a bag- 
gage car. As I entered the door the baggage man was 
slamming down a tremendous trunk within a few inches 
of the dog's head, with a crash that would have disturbed 
a terra cotta image, with no other effect than to make 
Jack open his eyes in mild surprise. Then, finding that 
he needed the space occupied by the dog, the man, Avho 
was either a good reader of canine character or very 
reckless, coolly picked the big dog up and pitched him 
upon a pile of trunks four trunks high, where, after one 
look of wonder at the strong man, the old fellow curled 
down for a quiet time. Concluding that the dog was an 
experienced traveler. I returned to my seat in the 
smoking car with an easy mind. 
• At the end of our railroad journey we found that as it 
was mid-afternoon, night would overtake us before we 
could reach our destination, so settled down for the 
night in a hotel, I occupying No. 41 front, and Jack 
the furnace sawdust pile in the basement. I heard him 
corrtplaining about something that did not entirel}' suit 
him at intervals of an hour or more, before "nature's 
sweet restorer" visited me, but as I had troubles of my 
own I left him to tell his troubles to the night watch- 
man. 
We started on our twelve or eighteen mile drive the 
nextmorningat 7:30, and I feel sure that the man who said 
it was the former distance must have had the same kind 
of weather to drive in that we had, a clear, bright, frosty 
day. The air was snappy, the horses full of go, the road 
firm and tolerably smooth, and the woods fairly riotous 
in autumn colors. 
By 10:30 we were enjoying the hearty welcome that 
comes so freely and frankly from the native Tennessean, 
be his domicile a two-room cabin and his pscitdonym 
Uncle Bill, or a two-story mansion and Colonel, sah! 
_ My host, an M.D., was the owner of one of our many 
famous mineral springs that abound in the eastern ?art 
of the State, known as Wright's Epsom Spring, the wa- 
ters of which had proved such a general specific for all 
the ills to which flesh is heir, especially those of the 
stomach and liver, that, discarding the orthodox saddle- 
bags, he had concentrated his efforts to benefit the race 
by the' dissemination of epsom water to the entire satis- 
faction of his patrons and increased profit to himself. 
"Greeting me warmly, he ushered me into the sitting 
room of his big, old-fashioned house, and at once I 
knew my visit would be a delight, even if the weather 
should change and birds prove scarce, for half across the 
end of that most cosy of all rooms, the "sitting" room of 
a country home, stretched a big, open fireplace, with a 
glorious wood fire snapping and purring its welcome. 
I love poetry and pictures, but would Avillingly lay aside 
Shakespeare, Browning or Swinburne, and turn from 
■Rembrandt, Van Dyke or Bonheur to look upon a glori- 
outs combination of poetry and picture such as is seen 
inr the open wood fire — ever changing, always beautiful, 
fitting, every tnood known to man; a joy in happiness, a 
consolation in sorrow, literally "a thing of beauty and 
a joy forever." 
The good lady of the house had, with the spirit of self- 
sacrifice incident to a devoted mother, left her pleasant 
home and gone to live in town for the school term, to be 
near ^nd care for the young folks of the household while 
tbey pursued the devious way that now leads up to a 
diplomat; but she had left a most capable substitute, 
as fully demonstrated when the lady in charge of niy 
friend's house invited us in to dinner shortly after I had 
gotten brushed up and thawed out. 
Buriiig the dinner hour the Doctor told me, as I al- 
ready knew, that he was not a sportsman, but that he had 
located the nearby coveys of birds, and secured me the 
necessary pernjission to shoot on adjoining lands, and 
when business permitted would go with me occasionally 
on short trips, as general factotum and appreciative 
audience. He also assured me that the best information 
he could obtain indicated that birds were very plentiful; 
but as there ha,d been no heavy rains since frost had set 
in, the cover was very heavy and weed pollen aJmost 
too much for any dog to do good work, in both of which 
surmises I found him entirely correct. 
: Immediately after dinner I got into my shooting 
dothes, unchained Jack, and sallied forth, accompanied 
by the Doctor, who agreed to go far enough to give me 
the lay of the land for my first try at the birds. It was 
very necessary that I keep on the lands covered by the 
permits granted the Doctor for me, as the Legislature 
of Tennessee, ijnlike the legislative bodies of other States, 
which may be guilty of unwise or unnecessary acts, is 
never known to pass any act that can possibly be criti- 
cised, as witnessed by the act regulating the goin_^ on 
the lands of another for the purpose of hunting, wfeieh it 
solemnly declares can only be lawfully done when the 
sportsman is armed, in addition to the usual equipment, 
with "the written permission of the owner of the lands." 
Jack had a wire edge on that bid fair to make our first 
outing only a steam letting. Fences,_ ditches, fallen trees 
and everything that came in his way he jumped, or tried 
to, and ran himself at a gait and to a degree that in an- 
other dog wovdd have speedily resulted in utter exhaus- 
tion; but Jack was not another dog; he was the dog. 
Many a good and true dog have I shot over, but none of 
them ever was wont to cover as much ground and so 
thoroughly as this same dear old, gentle, rangy Jack. 
We were a pair, that first afternoon out, and though I 
could not keep the pace that the dog set, I was in per- 
fect sympathy with him, and occasionally cut a bit of a 
caper. 
We crossed a meadow where hay had been gathered, 
cutoff the corner of afield sowed in wheat, and were work- 
ing up a fence line, where the fence had been mostly re- 
moved, leaving the bushes and briers that had grown in 
the corners, when we first found game. It was a rabbit, 
ordinary in size, when it came bobbing down toward me 
from where Jack had jumped it, but a tremendous big 
fellow before I succeeded in bestowing it upon a grateful 
little son of Ham, after carrying it a mile or more. I 
rarely can resist a rabbit, and this one, crowding right 
down on ine — with all my wire edge on and the good 
dog standing like the renowned idol of the Confederacy, 
only up on tiptoe, craning his neck to see over a slight 
elevation that was between us — quickly went the way of 
all his kind that fool around a tenderfoot from town 
when he has a gun. 
Soon thereafter we worked into a field with occasional 
patches of sedge grass, and without any preliminary 
skirmishing down went old Jack to a steady point, and 
with a "\''ea-up! Steady, boy!" I closed in on him, when, 
with a quick, apologetic glance around from under his 
right ear, he admitted that he had been a bit hasty, and 
though close on feathers, did not have the real thing. It 
was meadowlarks, and they rose nicely, and were a sore 
temptation to the new gun, but as I was off for several 
days, and had no excuse for getting in all possible shoot- 
ing, even not considering that the lark is not only pretty 
but a sweet singer, I dropped the gun back on my 
shoulder, and bid the dog, "Try again." 
We found our first covey' in a cornfield, or, rather, in 
a dense thicket growing in and around a large sink hole 
in the middle of the field. The corn was thick and high, 
and grew right up to the edge of the thicket, and when 
the dog did not return to report for three or four min- 
utes I knew he had found birds, and started off to hunt 
him. Round and round, back and forth, I trainped in 
that jungle for ten minutes, and finally walked into the 
covey of birds in the edge of the thicket without having 
seen the dog, which had become exhausted and lain 
down on his point. They were big, strong-flying birds, 
and dashed through the trees like pheasants, across to the 
other side of the thicket. 
I should have been facetiously hilarious at the ex- 
pense of a friend who stood where I did, and tried, with 
the right and then the left, to stop one of those brown 
rockets without disturbing a feather, and could have told 
him exactly wherein he had miscalculated; but, with the 
best of opportunities, I have as yet failed to figure out 
any cause or excuse for either the one or the other 
miss that I then scored, except the cold fact that I did 
not hold on the birds. Jack was disappointed, and 
plainly told me so, and almost caused an unpleasantness 
by insisting upon looking for a "dead bird" that was 
not to be found. He finally allowed himself to be per- 
suaded to join me in a forward movement to try again, 
and with the thought that I had better arrange to bor- 
row my next dog from a man who did not teach his 
dog that a bird was to be found dead every time he 
fired a shot, we resumed our hunt. 
The first point the dog made, when we found the birds 
again, was a single, which flew straight down between 
the tall rows of corn, making the shot like rolling a ball 
down a tenpin alley; but the old fellow was not hyper- 
critical, and when he gave up the bird and received his 
welcome pat on the head, his congratulatory antics were 
as sincere as though I had made a really difficult shot. 
The next find was three birds, which flushed all to- 
gether. The first one flew low and was lost in the thick 
corn before I could hold on it, turning half way round. 
I tried the second, with the same result; and wheeling 
entirely around I killed the third bird, that had risen 
above the corn — a long and difficult shot. 
By the hardest kind of work we routed out three more 
birds from the corn jungle, one of which we only heard, 
one we only scared and one we only feathered; then, 
concluding that open country, with fewer birds, would 
give better average results, we made for the nearest 
fence. 
The next field hunted was a level stretch, from which 
hay had been cut, and which had been left undisturbed 
in several places, where the weeds were in the majority. 
Several larks flushed as we got well out in the hay 
stubble, and at last the dog came down to a fine point 
off to my left. 
Supposing it to be another lark, I walked down on 
him, directly in his face, not taking the trouble to prop- 
erly round and come up from the rear, and just as I 
closed in on him, thinking that I would,give the lark a 
start of so yards and then try a long shot, a fine covey of 
quail burst out of the grass immediately in front of the 
dog and between us, and flying directly in my face, 
divided over my shoulders, right and left, and flew 
straight as a gun barrel on over the open field, Of 
course even such an unexpected event could not dis- 
turb the equanimity of a veteran, and so of course 
I coolly turned on my heel, selected a bird, killed it with 
the right barrel, then quickly but coolly selected two 
that were in line and killed them both with the second 
barrel. 
No, I can't- say that it happened exactly that way, but 
it seemed to me that it might have, as I stood looking 
at that splendid covey of birds, holding my empty gun, 
both barrels of which I had fired in a fine frenzy of 
excitement before the birds had gone 50 feet past me 
and without ruffling a feather. 
How many kinds of fools I called myself in the next 
few minutes I cannot now recall, but it was several. 
But JaK;k, the kind, considerate, getjtle old'Tfcllow, was 
positively rude. He searched the ground over and over: 
for dead birds, and then came and insisted on an ex-; 
planation, refusing to allow me to pet him and change' 
the subject. Finally ,after repeatedly and thoroughly 
huntmg out the ground, and assuring himself beyond, 
the shadow of a doubt that I had let the entire covey get ' 
away, he went to the extreme end of the field and ab- 
sented himself longer from me than he had done at any 
one time since we started. ; 
The birds had gone into a cornfield, but as the corn 1 
had been gathered it was a very fair field to shoot in ' 
so I concluded that there was yet a chance for me to' 
redeem myself. Resting on the fence until Jack worked 
off his fit of indignation, I called him to me, and pet- 
ted him until we mutually agreed to forget, and then 
at it we went again. 
The field had a slight elevation about midway, and 
here the dog caught scent, and after a half dozen cau- 
tious steps, was down on a point by a shack of corn. 
With the ground sloping away slightly in all direc- 
tions, and the corn shacks low enough to be out of the 
way, it was an ideal place to shoot, and there was no ex- 
cuse for any man who pretended to shoot missing more 
than an occasional bird, and I knew it. The first flush 
was a pair, and they fell within 20 feet of each other, 
clean killed. Then a single bird, which showed ragged 
at the first barrel and was fairly stopped with the sec- 
ond. Another pair offered next, only one of which was 
considerate enough to stop. Then a single was missed 
Avith both barrels, but before the smoke had cleared away 
another double was made that proved ample consola- 
tion. Three more birds were brought to bag with five 
more shots, and then, as the survivors were scattered. 
Jack and I shook hands and iigreed to call it a day. A 
native asked me. "how many birds?" as I dropped from 
the fence into the road, and I had to admit that I did not 
know, but well I did know that, although my game 
pockets were not entirely filled, I had a. full sense of 
entire satisfaction with my afternoon. 
The wood fire shot a warm red welcome light from 
every window as I approached the house, and after a 
hearty supper and a pleasant evening with the genial 
Doctor, I turned in. with the fervent wish that the mor- 
row might be bright and clear. 
- LEvias Hopkins. 
Lost in the Bush* 
A GOOD many years ago I was on the station of Saltbush 
Park in Queensland, Australia, breaking wild horses to 
nde. When forty or fifty had been partially tamed and 
were somewhat used to being guided by an intelligence 
and a will stronger than their own, it was the practice of 
Mr. C. J. Harden, the manager, to drive them to Rock- 
hampton, about 250 miles distant, where they met with a 
ready sale. He usually took me with him. 
On one trip, of which I am to write. Harden was de- 
tained in town by some business, so he told me to return 
alone. Just as I was starting he said to me : "We have 
not seen the Diamond mare's mob [Australian for band] 
for some time. I wish you would hunt them up when you 
get back." When within three or four miles of Salt- 
bush, I thought I could see a gray animal across Fun- 
nel Creek. This creek ran parallel to the road for about 
the last six miles, and was about a half-mile from it 
Like all Australian creeks and rivers, in Queensland at 
any rate, it was dry except during the rainy season, when 
it became a foaming torrent. In places the water stood 
in holes, some small and shallow, and others from one- 
quarter to one-half mile in length, and several feet deep. 
All along the banks of these creeks grow mighty gum 
trees, with she-oak fig trees, etc., so that it is almost im- 
possible at a short distance to distinguish anything on 
the other side. 
Funnel Creek has very steep banks, so on arriving at 
the top of the bank next to me I carefully looked around 
on the other side. Our nearest neighbors lived thirty 
miles away, and sometimes we did not see a strange face 
for a month. Imagine, therefore, if you can, what a 
terrible start I gave when I heard a human groan from 
the bottom of the creek. 
Thoroughly scared, 1 looked down, and there I saw a 
man lying extended on the sandy bottom, bare-headed and 
evidently in a bad way. Recovering my wits somewhat, I 
tied my horse to a: bush and descended the steep bank. 
On reaching the bottom I walked up to the prostrate 
figure and .said, "Hello, mate! What's the matter?" Not 
receiving any answer, I raised the limp body to a sitting 
position, and could then see that the unfortunate man 
was perishing of thirst, for his tongue protruded from 
his mouth, and resembled a piece of dried bologna sau- 
sage. 
Dragging him gently to the side of- the creek, I placed 
his back against the bank in a shady place, and then hastily 
climbed up to where I had left my horse to get a tin pan- 
nikin off my saddle. Having secured this, I hastened 
down the bank and v.'ent up the creek a few hundred 
yards to where I knew there was a water hole. 
Turning the vessel bottom upward and baring my arm, I 
thrust it down imder the water and then reversing it I 
brought it up quickly. Though young and inexperi- 
enced, I knew it would be fatal to allow bim_ to drink 
much at one time, so I continually moistened his tongue, 
and wetting my handkerchief tied it round his head. At 
the end of a couple of hours the man was much revi\^d, so 
with incredible difficulty I succeeded in getting him up 
the bank and placing him on my horse. I was a slightly 
built young fellow in those days, and I have never been 
able to understand how I was enabled to perform a feat 
requiring so much strength. Luckily, my horse was 
gentle, because all my strength was required to hold the 
man on the animal. After a walk of what seemed to 
be many hours, but probably was not much more thsxi 
one, we reached Saltbush Station. I gave him food and 
milk in small quantities and at short intervals. Toward 
evening he was sufficiently recovered to talk, incoherently 
it is true, but little by little I gathered the following 
story: His name was Dick Turner, and he had been a 
shepherd at Grosvenor Downs for over two years. Wish- 
ing to go to Cardovvan, which was eighty miles away by 
road, in an evil hour he had been persuaded to strike 
across the bush, having been told he could cut off thirty 
miles, with the ine-vitatle r^Stilt that by nightfall he hs^d 
lost all be^rifigs, 
