Feb. 13, 1904.J 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
128 
shot was possible at that woodcock, and the probability 
of finding another very remote. 
When I could no longer catch even a glimpse of the 
bird, I slipped in fresh shells and turned to my com- 
panion, who had stood quietly by, and was much sur- 
prised when he said : "Come on, if you are ready, I saw 
where it lit and we will get it up again." Seriously 
doubting, but sincerely hoping, I took the direction in- 
dicated by him, and after going but a little way the bird 
flushed again, and flew straight away into an almost im- 
penetrable thicket. The trees were very thick, and I 
waited a little with the hope of getting a fairer view of 
the bird than first offered, and at last had to take a 
chance shot at long range. Apparently I scored, but 
although we searched every foot of the ground that we 
could get to, including some that would have been hard 
traveling for anything but a snake, we never could find 
the bird. My sorrow was real when we finally con- 
cluded to give up the quest, and I felt an almost irre- 
sistible inclination to wear out a little of the all too 
abundant small growth on the dog, whom I could not get 
to take any interest in the recovery of our bird. "Fray 
b' " ' ^"-1" hiiT" the Esquire shouted, as I called and 
whistled him back for about the twentieth time. "A dog 
tnai win. run his legs off after a rabbit and then refuse 
to hunt a bird which you prize so highly ought to be 
worn out. Here, let me cut you a hickory." I was 
strongly tempted to take it out of the dog, but resisted the 
temptation, knowing that it would do neither present nor 
future good. 
Seeing how real was my disappointment, the Esquire 
suggested that we let the quail off for the remainder of 
the hunt, and continue up through the strip of timber 
and try to get up another woodcock. To this I gladly 
assented, although the going was something fearful. Cat 
briers, bamboo and blackberry vines, to say nothing of 
small growth of every variety, were thickly interspersed 
with swampy spots, where we would find ourselves sink- 
ing over shoe-top in cold water when we stopped to un- 
wind some thorn-studded vine in which our feet had be- 
come hopelessly entangled. But there was an occasional 
bit of open woods, and ever the chance of getting up 
another woodcock, so I slowly and painfully worked 
along, with the Esquire abreast of me fifty feet away, 
and Roscoe at heel, looking disgusted and penitent. We 
received a reinforcement after going a little way in the 
person of "Richard," a darkey, who loved a gun and 
had heard us shooting and come to investigate. "He 
hunts a great deal," said the Esquire, "and will know if 
there are any woodcock here, and I will make him go 
along and help us." 
"Howdy, Mistah Gawge," said the boy, as he drew 
near, and "Howdy, suh," to me, but looking at my gun. 
"Has you all had good luck?" The Esquire answered 
briefly, and inquired about the woodcock, but called 
them snipe. 
"Yas, suh, dey is snipe in heah. I see two or three 
mos' ev'y time I come squill huntin'," was the encour- 
aging reply. 
And so, covering a little more ground, and kindly allow- 
ing our new ally the roughest and hardest of it, we 
moved on. As far as I knew the habits of the bird, we 
were in the very best of woodcock cover, but I began to 
feel somewhat discouraged when we reached the upper 
end of the long stretch of timber without finding a bird ; 
but we had the other side to hunt back, with the encour- 
aging statement from the boy that it was "De besses part 
of de groun' fob snipeses, enny way." 
After a short rest, we started back, working down the 
other side of the branch, and finding the vines as thick 
and tough, and the thorns as sharp. We were getting 
back almost to the starting point, and I was beginning to 
regret the undertaking, when a shout from Richard, who 
was on my left, announced a bird flushed. Making our 
way to him, he said the bird had flown but a short dis- 
tance, and he had it marked down and could take us to it. 
Encouraged by the boy's confident air, I followed him, 
my hopes high, and the walking nothing like as bad as it 
had been a moment before. The bird had not flown far, 
and after leading the way for a short distance, the boy 
stopped, and, pointing to a large tree, said: "H,e drap 
des by dat tree, dis side, I think." And he was right. 
Buck ague is not the only form of ague that attacks 
sportsmen. I have seen a small boy shaken by snowbird 
ague, and a strong man tremble with quail ague. It is 
not the size of the quarry, alone, it is the earnestness of 
the sportsman that makes him susceptible to this malady. 
I had worked hard, and undergone much suffering iji 
search of that bird, and I wanted it, and wanted it badly, 
and the consequence of this state of affairs was a by no 
means mild attack of woodcock ague as I approached 
the spot where I expected to find the bird. I was still 
laboring under the delusion that, if I missed, the bird 
would probably fly into the next township before light- 
ing again, which delusion did much to aggravate the 
malady. It was where I expected to find it, and flitted 
up with its flute-like whistle from my very feet, swinging 
over my left shoulder up throuarh the trees, drifting back 
at the report of my second shot like a handful of brown 
velvet, and the next moment I stood smoothing the soft 
plumage of America's greatest game bird. I bagged no 
more game in all my trip that afforded the pleasure that 
my first woodcock did. 
We worked out the remainder of the woods, finding 
no more woodcock, but getting up a small covey of quail, 
and a lusty old brown-backed woods rabbit. I could only 
get down one of the birds on the flush, but stumbled on 
another later on which was kind enough to fly straight 
away through timber sufficiently open to afford a shot. 
The rabbit simply fell victim to its size, as in such cover 
no ordinary rabbit would have affered anything like a 
fair shot, but it was extraordinary, and left a wake as it 
bored through the brush that made the shooting easy. 
Near the upper end of the woods, where we stopped for 
a short rest, was a sight to cause a tree lover to want 
to do murder. A magnificent poplar tree had been felled 
by some trifling darkeys to get a 'coon that had taken 
refuge in a hole in one of the long branches. The trunk 
of the tree was over five feet in diameter, and sound 
when felled, and there it lay, rotting on the ground, and 
not another tree to compare with it for miles around. 
The sight of such a forest monarch towering above his 
fellows would be an essay on patience, power, and peace, 
to the artistic soul ; and a quick bid to calculations to the 
commercial man. With a temperament in which the 
poetical and practical permeate like the bones in a shad, 
and with a real affection for trees, I waxed eloquent in 
my wrath at the sight of such vandalism. Inquiring of 
my companion if it was a common occurrence, he assured 
rne it was not, as the average African who prowled by 
night was too lazy to cut anything but the small trees, 
showing one instance in which a vice is positively a 
virtue. 
Just before leaving the woods I found another surprise 
■ — a pleasant one. A pair of deer horns, shed, but in an 
excellent state of preservation, and lying together. The 
fact of their being together was not surprising to me, as 
I did not know how unusual this was, but the Esquire, 
and many others with whom I talked on the subject, 
assured me that it was a very unusual circumstance, as 
the deer in shedding nearly always dropped one horn at 
a time, and finding the pair together was unheard of in 
that country. 
After leaving the woods and getting .well out in the 
fields on the way home, we had the good fortune to find 
a few more birds. A large hawk making suspicious 
dashe-s into the edges of a blackberry thicket attracted our 
attention, and we went to investigate. The hawk sought 
the seclusion of a near-by wood on our approach, leaving 
ten or a dozen badly frightened quail that he had been 
harrying, pattering about in the brier thicket. Roscoe 
struck scent as he approached the thicket, and creeping 
up to the edge, pointed, but the birds were so demoralized 
by the raid of the hawk, instead of lying close, they 
went rushing away to the other side. The dog held his 
point for a moment, rolling his eyes in great excitement, 
and then, breaking away, dashed around to the other 
side of the thicket near where the birds had retreated, 
and pointed again. The birds promptly turned and made 
for the other side as before, followed shortly by the dog. 
We walked around the thicket several times, but could 
not flush a bird, although we could plainly hear them 
running back and forth as the dog circled round. He 
had given over trying to stand them, and in great ex- 
citement was running first to one side and then the 
other, as the birds moved. "I see one," the Esquire 
finally said, "right in there" (pointing). "It won't fly, 
and I couldn't shoot it if it did, so I am going to shoot 
it sitting, and it may make the others fly out, so you can 
get a shot." At the roar of the big gun the birds flushed, 
and went away, flying very low. With the brier patch to 
shoot over, rny chance of scoring was remote, but I did 
get one bird down. While the dog was bringing my bird, 
my companion was working his way into the briers after 
his game, and, judging by the running fire of exclama- 
tions, was having a rough time. "Well, I got it," he said, 
backing out with a sound of rending and tearing as 
though he were leaving the greater part of his apparel 
behind, "and ain't he a beauty, though?" And it was a 
"beaut," at least what was left was. It consisted of about 
a foot of ragged meat and feathers, with a leg and two 
ragged wings hanging to it. 
"I don't shoot at them often, but certainly get them 
when I do," he remarked, as he stood ruefully contemplat- 
ing the wreck his.big gun had made of the bird. "Guess 
I will let you kill the rest. I seem to kill them too 
dead." 
The covey had flown to the woods, and as it was late 
and all hands tired, we concluded not to follow them. A 
single bird which had lingered behind flushed as we 
turned away, and flying but a short distance dropped on 
the edge of a line of small growth where had once been 
a fence. The dog was off ranging in the direction the 
others had gone, but as I had marked the exact spot 
where the bird had pitched, I did not wait his return. 
Approaching the place I found the ground comparatively 
bare, and looking carefully discovered the bird flattened 
out on the very spot he had first touched. I stood for a 
moment admiring it, and then stepping forward flushed 
t he bird in the direction the others had taken. The ground 
in the direction of its flight lay almost level for twenty 
or thirty yards, and then pitched down quite a steep 
bank. This bird also flew low, just along the top of the 
grass, but steady and straight away. As the bird neared 
the edge of the level ground my finger pressed the trigger, 
and at that very instant the dog's head appeared over 
the hill in line with the bird. I was fairly holding be- 
tween his eyes when the bird dropped, and cannot im- 
agine why he was not killed, but he was absolutely un- 
touched. After a quick duck of the head and a start of 
surprise, the dog caught up the bird, which had fallen 
at his feet, and brought it in as though nothing out of 
the ordinary had occurred, but if ever he has a closer call 
with a gun in the field, I do not want to be the author 
of it. _ 
Arriving at home my woodcock made the round of the 
entire house, admired by all, and lay in state until after 
Slipper before a feather was removed. 
Lew is Hopkins. 
Captain Miles Keough. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
While trying to tell what I knew about horses with 
curious appetites, in a late number of the Forest and 
Stream, I had occasion to mention the only horse which 
escaped the Custer massacre, and this brought to my mind 
again the man who rode that horse into that camp of 
Sitting Bull's on the Little Big Horn, and died there. He 
deserved a better fate. 
In the summer of 1864 the cavalry General, Stoneman, 
came from the eastern army to take command of Sher- 
man's cavalry, and brought with him a young staff officer 
who looked as though he had just stepped out of some 
tailor shop. He wore a neat new uniform, a white shirt, 
and linen collar, and seemed to be., entirely out of place 
here. This was Captain Miles Keough, a young Irishman, 
twenty-four years of age, who had belonged to the Pope's 
army, but had left it to come to the United States in 
search of adventure. He found it. 
Stoneman attached himself to our regiment; we were 
the only regulars here, all the rest being volunteers. Had 
Keough been in the ranks, the men would have worried 
him into a decline, or would have tried to do it. They 
would not have succeeded with him, though. But those 
officers who had set him down as being a mamma's good 
little boy, who would faint and fall out of his saddle the 
first time a Johnny fired a shot at him, contented thein- 
selves with passing remarks when Keough was where he 
could hear them, as to where the nearest laundry could 
be found, or had the officer who was being addressed 
paid his tailor last pay-day? Had they only known him 
as well then as they afterwards came to know him, some 
of these remarks might not have been made. There was a 
danger, though they did not know it then, of some of 
them being asked to come out and look at this linen col- 
lar across the barrel of their pistol. But Keough took 
their remarks good naturedly, and in time lived down the 
poor impression he had made when he first came. The 
cavalry officers, when in the field, dressed in much the 
same way that their men did; they had to; their tailor 
and ours was carrying a carbine now, and was not doing 
anything m the tailoring line, for them or us, either. 
The officer had on generally a pair of our blue woolen 
trousers, a coarse flannel shirt, and one of our 
blouses. The only way he could be distinguished from one 
of us was by his shoulder straps, and they would often be 
missing. But he would have on a white soft hat, with a 
pair of small cross-sabres on front; our black hat would 
have sabres twice the size of his; that is how we could 
tell he was an officer, and often the only way. 
Sherman was in front of Atlanta and Stoneman was 
breaking up railroads, or trying to; he tried to oftener 
than he succeeded. While in one of these railroad 
destroying trips, Stoneman was stopped one day by a 
force of Confederate cavalry, who had posted themselves 
on top of a heavily wooded hill. Some of our troops 
were sent to dislodge them, and made the charge, but 
were driven back each time. While they were forming 
again to make another charge, Keough rode down to them 
and said to the captain who was in command that Gen* 
eral Stoneman had been kind enough to direct him to take 
command during the next charge. He was welcome to it, 
and the officers were now anxious to see what he would 
do with it after he had got it. 
He formed his four troops in column of fours, each 
troop parallel with the next one; that made a solid 
column with a platoon front. The Confederates, who 
were hid by the timber, had stopped firing after the last 
repulse. They might as well stop, they could not hit 
anyone from where they were on top of the hill, and the 
timber prevented them from seeing much, anyhow. But 
as soon as Keough had started his column up at a trot, 
he ndmg at its head, the firing began again. Keough 
stood up in his stirrups, and, facing his men, swung his 
cap above his head and yelled, "Give them a cheer, boys, 
and go for them now." 
The cheer was given, and they went for them, sending 
the Confederates clear across the hill and down the other 
side of it; and here the rest of the regiment that had 
followed him to support him, took up the chase and kept 
the enemy going. 
Whenever a charge was made after this, if Keough was 
present, he took part in it, whether he had any command 
or not, and always came out without a scratch even. 
When the Seventh Cavalry was raised a few years after 
the close of the war, he was given a troop in it, and his 
troop was one of the five that Custer took into that 
charge, when he struck "the biggest Indian camp on top 
of the ground." This was Custer's description of that 
camp when he first saw it. 
Keough's body was found not far from where Custer 
lay, within the circle where they had made their "last 
stand," and to-day all that remains to commemorate him 
is a little post that was afterwards built upon the Yellow- 
stone, Fort Keough. 
There lately hung in the State House at Lincoln, Neb., 
an oil painting of "Custer's Last Charge." The 
portraits of Custer, his brother Tom Custer, and Keough 
were in it, and very naturally, too. Some crank of the 
Carrie Nation type destroyed it a few weeks ago by cut- 
ting a strip out of the middle of it. She did it because 
the picture had been given to the State by a brewing firm. 
Cabia Blanco. 
The Maryland Law* 
The Maryland State Game and Fish Protective Association has 
prepared a game warden's law and a ducking law, which it is 
about to ask the Maryland Legislature to pass. The laws are pre- 
pared with a view to bringing the laws of Maryland into harmony 
with the game laws of other States, and for the preservation of 
wild animals, birds and fish, conserving the future supply of game 
in a rational manner. 
The officers of the Association have consulted with game deal- 
ers, wholesale and retail, and with sportsmen, before preparing 
the new law, and it is believed that they meet the general approval 
of all who are interested. 
Mr. Ogden Milton Dennis, secretary of the Association, in ex- 
plaining the proposed application of the law recently, made the 
following statement: 
"First— The proposed new law has for its primary and main 
object uniformity of the game laws of this State. There is no 
change in the open season, except that the new law will make it 
lawful to shoot birds and game, except certain shore birds, from 
Nov. 1 to Dec. 24, but it will be lawful for those who have game 
in their possession killed on or prior to Dec. 2i to use or sell 
the same up to Jan. 1 following. 
"That provision is put in for this reason: Many dealers have 
a large stock of birds on hand on the last day of the closed sea- 
son, to wit, Dec. 24, and it is unfair to them to say that they 
must destroy these birds or throw them away. To meet this the 
season for having in possession is extended one week, but of 
course during that week no birds may be caught or killed. 
"Second — Many dealers are under the impression that they can- 
not sell or export game at any time during the open or closed 
seasons. The bill makes no such i>rovision. All reference to the 
sale and export of game and birds is to the closed season, to wit 
Jan. 1 to Nov. 1. In this instance, the law remains the same as 
it has been for years. ' 
"Third— As to the license bill. This bill does no make it unlaw- 
ful for a resident to kill birds or game in his own county without 
first obtaining a license. It provides that a non-resident of the 
State shall pay a license fee of $10 before hunting; but that all 
resident hunters other than those who reside in a particular 
county shall procure a license and pay therefor the sum of $1 
That is to say, if Mr. E. lives in Anne Arundel county he will 
not have to procure a license to shoot in Anne Arundel county 
but if he wants to shoot in any of the other counties of the 
State, he will have to procure a license, paying $1 therefor. 
"This bill will give the landowner the privilege of inviting^ any 
one to shoot on his property, provided he has a hunter's license 
The bill is introduced mainly for the puri)ose of preventing a man 
in one county cleaning up the game in his county, and then step- 
ping over the line and cleaning up the game in his neighbor's 
county. Of course, sportsmen and gentlemen do not do this thing, 
but market and pot hunters do." 
All communications intended for Forest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individwal connecte4 with the paperf 
