May 4, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
561 
that he suffered greatly from fear during such 
demonstrations. 1 assured him that it was no 
discredit to a man to experience fear on occas¬ 
ions such as that which we had just passed 
through. On the contrary, I had greater respect 
for a man whom such natural manifestations 
moved to solemnity. John then remarked that 
he could not understand how it was possible for 
a man to disbelieve in the existence of a Su¬ 
preme Being in the face of such displays of 
power and awful grandeur. I coincided with 
him most heartily. 
On my manifesting surprise that coyotes 
should attack horses, especially at that season 
and in that country where small prey was abund¬ 
ant, John assured me that it was not a case of 
assault, but rather of fear. He said the wolves 
were so terrified by the electrical display that 
they sought the companionship of the horses. 
The latter manifested their disapproval of such 
measures by kicking right and left with fatal 
consequences. John said he could not account 
for the coyote bones, as those animals were not 
given to cannibalism unless driven to it by ex¬ 
treme hunger when the plains were covered with 
snow and small game was not to be found. We 
decided that some other carnivorous animal had 
found the carcasses and devoured the flesh in 
the early morning. John set my heart to beat¬ 
ing with anticipation by declaring that there 
might be mountain lions or wildcats in the 
vicinity. We made a close search of the ad¬ 
joining timber, but found nothing to show that 
John’s intimation was correct. 
On returning to camp we made the startling 
discovery that my reserve stock of biscuit and 
dried meat, which I had in a paraffin wrapper, 
inclosed in a canvas sack, had succumbed to the 
heat and dampness of the past few days, had 
gotten soft and was developing a growth of 
fungus. We washed and scraped the meat, in 
the hope that only the surface was affected, but 
we were disappointed. A musty flavor pervaded 
the entire lot, making it unpleasant to the taste 
and nauseating to the stomach. We had almost 
decided, during our confinement to the tent, that 
we would spend a week or more in that locality, 
especially since we had discovered a long stretch 
of deep, still water near our camp, and in this 
there were ducks, two species at least, which we 
took to be the American merganser and the 
black-bellied tree duck, the latter being much 
the smaller of the two. We argued that as it 
was past the nesting period, these birds might 
be fit for the broiler, in which case they would 
eke out our larder very materially. But now 
the outlook was changed. We could not sub¬ 
sist exclusively on duck meat, which as a con¬ 
comitant is too hearty for a protracted diet. 
The despised biscuit and dried meat and fish 
now loomed up as prime necessities which we 
must have. 
After a hearty breakfast on rabbit stew and 
a handful of biscuit found in my saddle bag, 
we began preparations for our departure. It 
was deemed expedient to lay in several rabbit 
carcasses, lest we find a scarcity of game on the 
trail. I volunteered to procure them and John 
seemed in no wise loth to attend to camp duties; 
in fact, he seemed to lack the enthusiasm in 
shooting that characterizes most residents of the 
West. I begrudged the use of a good deer 
charge on a little rabbit, so I asked the loan of 
John’s rifle, whose bore was much larger than 
that of mine, cut a bullet into small slugs, took 
a couple of the degenerate biscuits and started 
out to put a scheme of my own into execution. 
On reaching the rabbit haunts I scattered some 
biscuit bits over a foot square space, concealed 
myself in a nearby thicket and awaited develop¬ 
ments. It was but a few minutes until a scramb¬ 
ling flock of rabbits were in eager pursuit of 
the crumbs. It seemed a most unsportsmanlike 
thing to do, but I reflected, “They are only rab¬ 
bits,” and banged away, knocking over three of 
the animals, while as many more that escaped 
were evidently hurt. We wrapped the carcasses 
in the paraffin paper that had encompassed the 
biscuit, packed up our traps, loaded the ponies 
and started on the nearest cut for the river. 
John figured that we could reach the Arkansas 
bottom in about three days if we met with no 
accident. The horses felt fine after their pro¬ 
longed rest. That night we camped on the 
prairie, finding plenty of surface water in an 
old buffalo wallow. 
Shortly after noon one day we came up with 
a caravan of cattlemen bound from Hutchinson, 
Kans., to the ranges beyond the Cimarron, in 
what is now Oklahoma. There were fifteen or 
twenty men with saddle horses and three big 
prairie schooners, each drawn by four stout 
Percherons. The company was a combination of 
three ranchers in Southern Kansas who had 
joined interests and were bound for a location 
in the western extremity of the so-called 
Cherokee Strip or neutral lands, where they pro¬ 
posed to go into the horse and cattle breeding 
business. They were practically pioneers at that 
time in what subsequently became one of the 
most profitable businesses in the great South¬ 
west. 
Their business prospects interested us far less 
than their present commissary department. We 
journeyed with them until we reached what ordi¬ 
narily was a dry ravine, but which in conse: 
quence of the rains was a sluggish river of un¬ 
known depth. In a long swale between the 
ridges where the buffalo grass grew quite luxur¬ 
iantly, the horses were staked for the night and 
camp was made on the slope of an adjoining 
hummock. Pipes and conservation employed the 
evening pleasantly, and John and I spread our 
beds near one of the schooners, declining a 
friendly offer to share one of the tents. That 
night we heard the howls of timber wolves, a 
most terrifying sound to break the silence of 
those vast plains, but the incident encouraged 
us, as we were told that the wolves were from 
the Arkansas bottoms out foraging. 
After a good breakfast the following morn¬ 
ing I made a dicker with the steward of the 
party for several pounds of salt beef and pork, 
some venison steaks, a couple of pounds of 
sugar, a can of milk and a quantity of hardtack. 
We also secured a suit each of coarse flannel 
underwear from their “diddy chest,” paying 
therefor about what four suits of better quality 
would have cost in Kansas City or St. Louis. 
I also replenished my flask with an article of 
corn whiskey which would never lead me into 
temptation. 
Bidding our new-found friends good-bye, we 
galloped merrily to the southward, ourselves and 
our ponies in the best of spirits. The heat in¬ 
creased as the day waxed older; even the west 
wind, which was blowing half a gale by mid- 
dajq seemed to accentuate rather than diminish 
its intensity. The air was l.ke the exhaust from 
a blast furnace, and we wilted under its influence. 
We were overjoyed when about i o’clock we 
approached a strip of timber and hastened for¬ 
ward to avail ourselves of its promised shade. 
Though we found the shelter grateful, we found 
the timber infested by swarms of the most vora¬ 
cious gnats I ever before encountered. Fortu¬ 
nately they were not poisonous, but their con¬ 
stant stinging was exasperatingly annoying. 
Along the edges of the timber the buffalo 
grass grew in luxuriant profusion, while the 
ground between the tufts was literally covered 
with chips, the accretion of oft-repeated visits 
of the now absent herds. The gnats were chief¬ 
ly confined to the dense shade of the thick wood, 
hence after staking the horses we decided to 
make camp alongside this timber. Leaving John 
to arrange a fireplace, in which labor he evinced 
especial aptitude, I took my rifle and went up 
the stream in the hope of finding some edible 
game. I had proceeded perhaps a half mile 
when on casting my eye through a rift in the 
undergrowth I saw in the water, close by the 
opposite bank, what threw me into a nervous 
tremor. There, in plain view, affording the 
prettiest shot imaginable, stood two magnificent 
deer, a doe and a buck. They had evidently 
come down to drink and now stood, enjoying 
the shade, but flirting their heads from one side 
to another in an effort to drive off the pestering 
gnats. 
I quickly sank down on one knee, my heart 
beating like a trip hammer. My hand shook so 
it was with difficulty that I cocked the rifle. I 
finally succeeded, however, then set the trigger, 
brought the sights into range, resting across my 
knee, and was just in the act of touching the 
hair when my hand gave an involuntary twitch, 
my finger touched the trigger, and a falling 
branch five feet above the buck s head showed 
the course of the bullet. 
As the deer bounded away through the scrub 
I was so utterly disgusted with myself that I 
just threw myself on the ground and cried with 
rage and vexation. Circumstances could have 
favored my bagging a nice fat deer no more com¬ 
pletely, and like a great baby I had thrown them 
all away and permitted my nerves to run not. 
What sort of a hunter did I expect to make? 
Of what service had these weeks of roughing 
it been to me if such an incident was to un¬ 
string me? I stalked back to camp and begged 
of John to kick me good and hard. 
“Oh, you needn’t tell me; I know all about it. 
You’ve had an attack of buck fever, and like 
every other man you are mad as wildcats at 
yourself, but you’ll get over it; everybody 
does.” 
“What!” I exclaimed, “does every one have 
such an experience on encountering their first 
deer?” 
“Pretty much, I guess; in fact, I never heard 
of any one that didn’t. I know I had it, not 
only the first, but the second and third time I 
got a shot at a deer.” 
This assurance had a comforting effect upon 
me, but it was several hours before I could think 
with anything like calmness of those two fine 
deer and how I had scared them away. ^ In fact, 
I lay awake more than half of that night try¬ 
ing to figure out how it was that I could have 
done such an asinine thing. 
[to be continued.] 
