Dec. 20, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
789 
of a cannon wirch opens a mighty battle. I lis¬ 
tened to them, out of respect for his friendship, 
but could not laugh, without feeling like a liar. 
Clem, on the other hand, informed me that the 
stories with which I attempted to regale him 
were far too sad to spring at a desolate camp 
in the big woods on such a night. He said that, 
if I had no better ones than those I had told, he 
did not care to listen to me further. At that I 
became indignant and told him they were the best 
I knew, and that we should have brought along 
a good book full of funny stories. He made no 
reply. 
I don't know what was the matter with it, but 
the tobacco didn’t taste a bit good that night. 
And Clem didn’t care to play cards. He was 
sleepy and cross, and I wasn’t in any too good 
a humor, so we turned in. The fire was low, 
and by midnight the tent was stone cold, and we 
were almost temperature unconscious. 
Dawn found our spirits at a low ebb, but we 
drank them anyhow and made a bluff at enjoying 
the breakfast I prepared. After the repast I 
again brought forth the outing magazine and read 
aloud the article which had caused us to lose our 
minds temporarily. In it we discovered several 
new suggestions which were guaranteed to make 
life in the open a very attractive thing. Early 
in the forenoon Clem cleaned his shotgun and 
made ready to hit the trail. That’s about all 
he ever could hit with a shotgun. I asked him 
where he was going, and he replied that he was 
going to a stubble field about three miles east of 
our camp, where he felt sure that he would find 
a nice bunch of prairie chickens. At the thought 
of chickens I grew enthusiastic and wished him 
much success as he started off down the gulch 
a't a long, swinging stride. 
During the forenoon I busied myself around 
the camp, but after the noon meal I struck out 
for a distant cornfield, to knock down a few 
cottontails. I had fairly good luck, and after 
shooting all I was willing to carry I struck the 
trail of a prairie wolf, which I followed for sev¬ 
eral miles. Darkness came on. I was glad that 
it did. I wanted to experience the feeling of 
being all alone in the woods at night. I hankered 
for the sensation of losing the trail, being near 
death from exposure, stumbling over stumps and 
logs in the darkness, and hearing a pack of hun¬ 
gry timber wolves close on my track. I was 
doomed to disappointment, however. None of 
those things happened. It merely grew dark, 
and I absolutely couldn’t lose myself, for the 
surroundings were too familiar to my feet. 
As I made my way back to camp I became 
very cold. I was chilled to the bone long before 
I climbed the last bluff which rose between me 
and the camp. My idea was that Clem would 
be in camp, and that a brisk fire and an appetiz¬ 
ing supper would be waiting to welcome me, but 
nothing of the kind was on tap. When I reached 
camp it was a deserted place, and very dark. 
With numb fingers I built a fire and put the 
kettle on it. Then I started to prepare supper. 
Every few minutes I looked out to see if Clem 
was coming with the prairie chickens, but he 
came no't. I wasn’t in any hurry to get supper, 
because I was hungry and I had an appetite for 
prairie chicken, but when he failed to put in an 
appearance at nine o’clock I began to get nerv¬ 
ous about him. I ate my supper with little 
relish, for we didn’t even have horseradish in 
camp. 
The later it became the more I worried about 
Clem. Could he have lost his way and fallen 
into a gully somewhere to freeze? Had he 
frozen to death on the trail? Had he stepped 
into an airhole while crossing the river on the 
ice? Those questions and dozens of others more 
frightful came to me as I sat in that dismal old 
tent and listened to the howling northwest wind. 
Could Clem have been overtaken by a pack of 
'hungry wolves? (Business of me going to the 
tent entrance and listening long and anxiously 
for the sound of wolves quarreling over a car¬ 
cass.) Nary a sound was wafted to my ears, 
except the low murmur of the chilly wind as it 
frolicked in the nearby gullies. Where, oh where 
was Clem? Should I start out on his trail and 
endeavor to find him? Not at that hour of the 
night, I told myself. Dozens of times no! I 
was anything but a pious monk of St. Bernard ! 
Well, I sa't around that gloomy tent until 
midnight, listening for the crunch of Clem’s 
footsteps in the frozen snow, but he cameth nix! 
I never saw such a tardy individual. 
At midnig’ht I gave up the death watch, and 
curled up in my Percheron kimona. All that 
night I rolled and tumbled, and worried, and 
Wondered, and saw gnomes and sumphs and 
other strange and unearthly objects prowling 
around my “budwar.” That was the spookiest 
night I ever put in. The gloom was so abundant 
in my vicinity that I had to push it out of the 
way in order to make room for me to elbow my 
way to the stove, when I arose at daybreak. 
My head was stopped up, I had a cough, and 
I felt rotten generally. I ate a bite of breakfast 
in silence and solitude. After breakfast I craved 
a break-up-a-cold tablet, for I felt as though I 
might come down with pneumonia at any mo¬ 
ment. 
At 10 oclock that forenoon Clem was still 
among the missing. I weighed the fact carefully 
and decided to call a meeting of the board of 
directors. As one of the directors I decided that it 
was my duty to save myself first and then do all in 
my power to save Clem if he was still in condi¬ 
tion to make a good preserve. Accordingly I set 
out for town, determined to get something to 
break up my cold, and then to notify the sheriff 
that Clem was missing, and have a searching 
party sent out to interview the prairie chickens 
in the stubble fields east of our camp. 
Before setting out I put on my snow shoes, 
for it looked as though it might snow hard that 
day. Yes, we had snowshoes. They were an 
absolute hindrance to us, but then we had to have 
them, because we were exploiting the “back to the 
woods’’ idea. There wasn’t enough snow to make 
them practicable, but we had to have them, never¬ 
theless. Clad in my woodsman costume, lugging 
a heavy rifle, and skidding along on snowshoes 
(Continued on page 804.) 
EUROPEAN CHATTER 
By E. G. B. FITZHAMON 
Our Foreign Correspondent. 
Surrender Park, Kent, England, 
December 20, 1913. 
ISITING the celebrated American amateur 
marksman, the Chevalier Walter Winans— 
the order and rank of Chevalier was con¬ 
ferred upon him in Europe in recognition of his 
versatile talents and public services—at his beau¬ 
tiful country home in a great English park, I 
have learned from him that he is offering to the 
United States Army a clever but simple little 
device he has invented. 
It is a little locking device on a tiny fish¬ 
plate adjacent to the safety knob on the left-hand 
side of the weapon, which is the new .45 auto¬ 
matic Colt’s pistol, the new regulation arm—he 
says-—of the United States Army. 
When the safety is on, the Chevalier, with 
that swift dexterity born of long familiarity 
with and expert use of firearms, releases it with 
a quick movement of the thumb simultaneously 
(as nearly as human eye can detect) with his 
pulling the trigger. The possibility of such a 
performance—by constant practice, of course— 
commends this pistol highly as a military firearm. 
But the safety knob, being placed on the left side 
of the gun for handiness, comes in contact with 
the holster’s side that is worn next to the body 
of a right-handed shooter. 
After making several tests, on foot and 
mounted, Chevalier Winans concluded that the 
possibility of the safety being released by friction 
always would exist. Then he set to work to in¬ 
vent a locking device for the safety, when set 
on. He has evolved it, he says, in the little cross¬ 
bolt he showed to me on his new .45 Colt. It 
seemed to work perfectly and to answer its pur¬ 
pose admirably. 
Highly pleased with his little device, this 
good sportsman patriotically decided to offer it 
to the United States Government, the offer being 
made by letter to the Chief of Staff at Washing¬ 
ton, Major-General Leonard Wood. 
The interesting and varied collection of big 
game trophies at Surrender Park, to which this 
American Nimrod has just returned from one of 
his periodical hunts for the four-footed denizens 
of the mountains and forests of Europe, has re¬ 
ceived an additional attraction comprising ten 
fine chamois heads. It must be a bold and ad¬ 
venturous spirit within that impels a man of 
middle-age and wealth to abandon temporarily 
the luxury of Surrenden Park for the frozen, 
slippery and dangerous Austrian Alps—menaces 
of falling rock, snow-slides, treacherous ledges 
and sheer precipices—to hunt the agile and elu¬ 
sive chamois. 
One is tolerably sure to get killed if one 
keeps on chamois hunting. Doubtless it is be¬ 
cause of the risks that those shapely little heads 
with sharp, upright prongs curved backward 
slightly at the tip are prized so highly by amateur 
hunters. 
While Chevalier Winans was on this expedi¬ 
tion two gamekeepers in the service of the King 
of Italy were killed by falling rock during a 
chamois hunt. 
“I went first to Weisenegg, Saltzberg, in the 
Austrian Alps,” the Chevalier told me in de¬ 
scribing briefly the principal features of his hunt. 
“Within half an hour’s climbing in ordinary 
shoes, without nails, I had a shot at 200 yards 
at a very big buck chamois and got him. 
“I used a .276 Mauser, fitted with telescope 
sight. 
“Then I went on to Grandler, Maria-pfarr— 
also in the Saltzburg Mountains—where I shot 
nine more chamois in four days. 
“The climbing was awful, and then only long 
shots—from 200 to 400 yards—generally at cham¬ 
ois going at full speed. When hit at the side of 
a precipice they may fall hundreds of feet. 
“To get on top of the mountain at Grandler 
I first rode an Alpine pony that climbed like a 
goat. But the final climb, among the rocks, had 
to be done on foot, in boots shod with steel claw- 
nails. 
“On steep snow it is awfully slippery. But 
the chief danger is from falling stones. On the 
first day at Grandler, when I got three chamois, 
a falling rock just missed one of the party, and 
lower down killed two sheep, breaking the back 
of one and smashing the other’s skull. 
“I feel a little proud of getting ten chamois, 
but I have had enough of the game.” 
Let us hope so. Going aloft in a racing 
yacht, to douse the clubtopsail when a halyard 
was afoul o’ something, always used to be climb¬ 
ing enough for yours truly. 
Chevalier Winans, since his return, has been 
made member of a high Spanish order, the honor 
having been conferred upon him by King Al¬ 
fonso. 
