THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Two of the foresters in Tartarow forest did a plucky thing one day. They 
were stalking with the Prince of Braganza, when they heard a shot up on 
the hillside above them. After some manoeuvring they saw the poacher, 
and followed him for an hour to his camp fire in the woods. They waited 
for some time until he commenced to cook some meat, after placing his 
rifle against a tree close by. Then on all fours the two foresters commenced 
to stalk their man, and succeeded in falling upon him before he could 
retreat or seize his rifle. The poacher got a month’s imprisonment in the 
local court. 
I returned to Tartarow from Magura sad at heart, for the season was 
over, and I had experienced all the feelings of one who has worked hard and 
been within an ace of success, yet without achieving it. At the home lodge 
I found our kind host, who, good sportsman that he is, did not complain 
that he had not himself had a shot the whole season, but only lamenting 
the fact that not one of his guests had killed a hart worthy of the place. 
“We leave for Vienna at eleven to-morrow,” he said, “ and if you like 
to rise at night and go to the other side of the Tartarow mountain you may 
find a good stag that is said to be roaring there. Will you go ? ” I needed 
no second invitation. Abdullah, the Somali, brought me a cup of tea at 
2.30 a.m., and, accompanied by Hryc, the stalker, and with Fedochuk as 
gillie, I mounted my pony and took the hill. Our way led across the river 
and up for three hours through the forest. At times it was so dark that it 
was difficult to find the way, as we only carried a candle set in a rude lamp; 
but just before daybreak Hryc signed to me to dismount, and we then found 
ourselves in an open Alpine clearing where the koliba was situated. Here 
the hunter began to call industriously as usual. No answer came, and we 
kept on ascending until the day broke, and with it a glorious view of the 
main valley. 
It was a grand morning of crystalline clearness after a night of slight 
frost. We could hear the moving train toiling up the hill to Wononienka; 
a dog barked miles away in the valley below, and the lowing of cattle and 
sheep, coming from the folds thousands of feet beneath us, was more 
suggestive of a mountain farmyard than a deer forest. Again and again 
the hunter emitted the melancholy plaint of the love -sick stag, till at last 
it became so warm and sunny that all chance seemed to have gone for the 
day. I must be off home to pack up and hope for better luck another time. 
Hryc shrugged his shoulders with explanatory regrets, and we started off 
along the narrow part in the direction of Tartarow. 
338 
