Jak. 23, 1904.J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
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71 
fligrht. Even then not all of them sought the ground, a 
few fluttering down into the dense growth of scrub 
oaks, while others flew to trees further up the hill and 
craned their necks in my direction. Once afterward 
I heard this or another lot of turkeys while in the 
woods, but during our stay they did not go to roost in 
that place, which recalled the conclusion arrived at by 
Irwin and myself, that these birds did not always roost 
in one place, else we should have heard thern and not 
been surprised to find them in the trees several days 
after our coming. However that may be. it was pleas- 
ant to fancy these birds to be of the same group seen 
there so long ago. Not that such a thing is probable, 
but it was good to think so, and be content with that. 
Breakfast over, and the camp made snug that morn- 
ing, we had time; to look about us, and I for one sur- 
veyed the old camp site with deep interest. The tent 
stood beneath a noble oak, while beside the larger 
tree were three smaller ones that had grown wonder- 
fully during the decade that had passed since my last 
cruise in these waters; but on looking at the trees 
carefully I found six or eight wire nails in their trunks 
seven feet or so above the ground, and knew at once 
that those nails were driven by Irwin and myself, and 
that they were brought with us from Denver, being of a 
sort not seen to-day. We had, in preparation for our 
cruise down the South Platte River, included a few of 
these nails in the outfit, and as that cruise was aban- 
doned on the plains, and all our camping duffle was 
shipped with the canoe to the Missouri, we had not 
again noticed these wire nails until camp was made in 
Turkey Hollow, when, finding no other use for them, 
we drove several in the trees and hung our rifles, salt 
meat, sweaters, etc., on them. Time had dealt kindly 
with them, and they were still serviceable to us, al- 
though the bark of the oaks left but an inch or so of the 
nails exposed, so much had the trees increased in diam- 
meter. Forty feet from the tent the hill above ter- 
minated in a little cliff twelve feet in height that was at 
right angles to the main clifi^ facing the river. The 
corner was almost as even and smooth as the corner 
of a stone house, while a perfect tunnel about five 
feet in diameter pierced the walls from side to side, 
making an arched shelter that had often been used by 
man and beast, if the numerous signs told the truth. 
One could scarcely believe this tunnel had been fornaed 
Skinning Squirrels. 
by the action of water, so smooth and even were all 
the walls, but without doubt thousands of years have 
passed since it was first exposed to the light. Above it 
the hill rose sharply to the siimmit of the cliff that 
overlooked the river, at which pioint of vantage the view 
was sublime. As we sat there in the sunlight and 
watched the great buzzards soaring in the blue sky 
above, and the myriads of wasps whisking here and 
there, the outline of the great Round Bottom, from 
Bolton's Shoal to Osage Bluffs, could be followed with 
the eye, a distance of thirty miles, perhaps, by water, 
but only three or four across the neck. In the '80s this 
immense tract of lowland was all heavily timbered, save : 
a. tiny spot here and there along the river where some 
'Dutchman, more enterprising than his neighbors, had 
cut put a field or two and was content with the handful 
of live stock and the puny crops the land provided for. 
Those trees were grand— tall oaks and hickories and 
sycamores, that sheltered myriads of small game and 
prevented the numerous creeks, springs and , swamps 
from drying up. One could shoot enough squirrels to 
satisfy the needs of camp without walking a half , mile, 
and often without moving about at all, once he had 
found a comfortable resting place on a fallen.log. As 
we saw Round Bottom the condition of it all was suf- 
ficient to bring tears into one's eyes who had seen it in 
all its natural beauty. Strips of woodland ran here and 
there, marking the timber that was deemed of little 
valup for cross-ties or cordwood. Elsewhere the fields 
were thickly dotted with the ghosts of one-time giants 
of the deep forest; great bare snags, devoid of foliage, 
their limbs fallen or falling in every storm, their trunks 
bearing the telltale girdle made with the ax for the 
purpose of rendering them barren of leaf Or sap^in 
other words, the shiftless man's method _of preventing 
the shading of his fields without going, to .the trouble 
of cutting the trees down and removing the wqod 
from the spot. Enough grand timber to provide houses 
for millions of poor people is thus utterly wasted, in 
this country; wasted because these girdled trees are 
left to stand until the. elements accomplish their decay 
and they fall, breaking up into bits that also are per- 
niitted to lie until sufficiently decayed to be pldwed 
under with the soih 
Oiie iniprovement noticeable to me was the rapid 
growth of the small, hickary trees -on the hills . surr 
rounding our carnp. Atid every tree twenty or m.6re- 
feet in height; was groaning undel- its burden of.' nuts, 
while even thenv although the few frosts that' had visited 
the region .were mere remilideris of those to- c^m.e, thr- • 
ground was so generousW sprinkled with the ripening 
%lrtfe ■ «re " h^ - eft -.diteH*^ ■ ^Ufii^ poii*^ ■ 
them: wherever we went. Persimmons, too, were ripen- 
ing nicely, and tiie great luscious fruit lay here and 
there among the stones at the water's edge, waiting for 
us to pick it up, so that camp was bountifully supplied 
with this delicacy, although the persimmons disap- 
peared like magic, while it seemed that the pawpaw crop 
would be exhausted in short order, so well were these 
peculiar things liked by us all. Not every person ac- 
quires a fondness for pawpaws on short notice, but both 
Helen and her mother, who tasted both persimmons 
and pawpaws for the first time that day, became very 
fond of them. 
Heavy winds and dark skies kept the squirrels at 
home, and I devoted a part of the day to building a 
Marais Creek. 
corduroy runway from the top of the slope to the 
water's edge. This was an easy matter, as a great 
quantity of driftwood lay a short distance from camp, 
and all that was necessary was to select short bits of 
wood and carry them to the place selected. The first 
stick was dropped in the soft mud, and my weight put 
on- it, whereupon it sank half its diameter and remained 
there as solidly as if it had been glued. Another sticK 
three- to_ four feet long was placed just below it and 
treated in the same manner. Continuing in this fash- 
ion down the slippery incline, it was not long before 
L reached the water's edge. For a landing two huge 
logs were rolled down and set in the mud side by side. 
Then two long oak saplings were cut, and after having 
been shorn of limbs with the ax, were pushed down in 
the mud until bottom was reached, so that they pre- 
vented the logs from rolling off into deep water. How 
long those poles were I will not say, but their tops 
were e\-en with our heads when we stood on the land- 
ing, so that the depth of the mud is left to the imag- 
ination of the reader. The walk was as even and drv 
as the most exacting canoeist could desire, although a. 
misstep would have placed one in a very unpleasant 
predicament. 
Several days were passed in this camp, some un- 
pleasantly warm for October, others dark and with 
drizzling rain. There was one evening when thunder 
was heard afar off in the west at sunset, followed later 
on by lightning. Not a breath of wind was stirring, 
and the storm that was gathering muttered and rum- 
bled until 3 o'clock the next morning before it reached 
our vicinity. Snail-like it crept along until a few drops 
of rain fell on the tent; then a heavier shower, and 
presently the rain was falling in dense sheets, while the 
thunder was tremendous, and lightning flashed so 
rapidly that the woods were a glare of light. How 
Our Camp at Friday HoHow. 
long the . downpour lasted "we did not know, for we 
went., to 'sleep- again presently; but in the morning the 
river was discolored and rising slightiv, which argued 
that :the.' rail!- ha.d been -of wide scope. 
The one thing, we had forgotten in starting on the 
cruise. was. kerosene for the vapor stove, and thinking 
of the little- bac-kwoods store where I had purchased 
supplies, years .ago, and which was but two miles due 
east) on;a -county.toad. we closed the tent one morning, 
and taking Helen "pick-a-back," we climbed the hill, 
and m due time arrived at the spot where the store 
once stood, but not a vestige that would lead one to 
believe human beings had ever lived m that tiny open 
spot m. the woods was ,to. be found; yes, one: a cer- 
tain o?.k that was some thii-ty yafds from the store and 
dwelhng showed, three, feet from its roots, a group of 
tinyVfOugh spots that 'recalled How. during the visits 
of Jrwm -and- .myself to the store, its keeper and his-, 
witc had practiced rifle shooting with us, and the target ■ 
as large as one's hand, then, was all that was left to 
tell that a house had stood hard-by a few short years 
ago. 
Behind our tent there was the dry bed of a stream, 
as previously mentioned. And across the ditch tliere 
was a well defined game trail that wound along under 
the cliffs to other hollows below. That it was used 
while we were asleep was not to be doubted, and often, 
as we sat beside the smouldering fire of logs, the patter 
of small feet could be heard as some small creature 
passed along the path on its way up the hill or down 
the riverside. One very bright moonlight night I hap- 
pened to be looking in that direction when I saw a 
bobcat in the trail, headed toward the slope, and in 
no haste to reach it, as it stopped a moment on seeing 
the camp, then moved on, looking back now and then, 
as if to satisfy its curiosity. The guns were at the time 
carefully stowed away in the tent. 
One afternoon I happened to be standing on the 
edge of this trail trying to locate a squirrel we had 
seen from camp, when a familiar sound reached my 
ears, and looking up the trail I saw a single file of 
quail coming toward me in the nervous, jerky walk 
these pretty birds assume when the springs in their 
legs and wings are drawn tense, ready for instant e^- 
panding. On they came until they were twenty feet 
distant, when the file executed a right oblique move- 
ment and sought a higher level along the lower ridges 
of the cliff. No leaves had as yet fallen, so that my 
footsteps gave out no sound as I followed the quail in 
a general direction for fifty yards or more, then stop- 
ped where I could command an open space slightly 
above me. Hardly had I stopped when the leader re- 
appeared and hopped up on a block of fallen stone, 
then sprang on a dead limb that had fallen from the 
height above and lay in a horizontal direction with its 
outer end resting in the top of a sapling. Along this 
the leader edged, his company following, until all were 
standing side by side. The leader called, as I after- 
ward concluded, to learn if all were present. This was 
followed by a jerky ruffling of feathers, then came 
another low note, the birds took wing in unison, and in 
a trice the covey was making its way across the river. 
This was the first time it had ever been my good for- 
tune to see so much discipline and preparation observed 
by Bob White, and in view of the fact that the flight of 
these birds is short, and many persons claim they 
Nomad and the Mate. 
seldom or never cross wide streams, in my opinion 
this covey was agitated over the matter and had fears 
that it swould not reach the other shore; but as the 
river is less than a quarter of a mile wide at that point, 
the covey gained the fields on the opposite shore in 
good order. 
There are some of the most curious things to be 
observed along the honeycombed bluffs of the Osage. 
For instance, while watching for squirrels one morn- 
ing a short distance away from camp, my vigil was 
ludely disturbed by a huge stone that came rattling 
down over a low bluff and fell some twenty feet away 
with a crash. As it happened that I was looking at the 
bluff that rose above the level place where the stone 
came from at the jnoment the stone made its appear- 
ance, I could see that it was pushed over the lower 
bluff by some power not visible to me. Training the 
telescope sight on the spot revealed nothing unusual, 
and half forgetting the occurrence, and seeing no 
game, I presently moved on to a small group of per- 
simmon trees and was in the act of gathering some 
of the luscious fruit when another stone, weighing thirty 
pounds or more, bounded down from the same low 
bluff and hurtled through the persimmon grove to the 
water just below. Again I examined the entire face 
of the broken bluff, but could see nothing; and intent 
on discovering what animal powerful enough to move 
those stones was in the vicinity. I circled about and 
approached the far end of the bluff, working toward 
the place against the wind and as cautiously as pos- 
sible, keeping hidden behind pawpaw bushes until with- 
in ten yards of the place, but nothing could be seen. 
No human being was near the place, nor could one 
scale the low cliff, judging from my own unsuccessful 
efforts. "Brer Fox,'' I finally concluded, andrsat down 
in a place commanding a clear, view of the ievei s^ot 
on the bluff, keeping the glass handy, but iio more 
stones were rolled dowti. in the half hour I remained 
hidden. . ' ■ ■ ■ 
It was on this morning that I .found myself -in a- vt^ide- 
hollow, where in years past the trees had been tall 
and sheltered countless Squirrels, both f Ox and gray; 
but all were gone, and the place was a waste of 
sturnps and dead timber and persimmon scrub choked 
with Spanish needles. The one-tinie' pretty stream 
that_ drained the . valley was a rnere ditch/ with almost 
vertical banks inclosing a bed of deep ooz.e, ,- in ; the 
center of which a tiny thread of water wendedits way 
nverWard. Beyond the creek stood' a few ta^I^ic}<o#y 
trees, left by the tie-hackers as fit for fuel only, and 
these were , groaning under their weight of nats, And - 
