We had other camp diversions besides reading. We had shooting matches,
almost daily, one canoe against the other, usually at any stop we
happened to make, whether for luncheon or to repair the canoes, or
merely to prospect the country. On rainy days, and sometimes in the
evening, we played a game of cards known under various names--I believe
we called it pedro. At all events, you bid, and buy, and get set back,
and have less when you get through than you had before you began.
Anyhow, that is what my canoe did on sundry occasions. I am still
convinced that Del and I played better cards than the other canoe,
though the score would seem to show a different result. We were
brilliant and speculative in our playing. They were plodders and not
really in our class. Genius and dash are wasted on such persons.
I am equally certain that our shooting was much worse than theirs,
though the percentage of misses seemed to remain in their favor. In the
matter of bull's-eyes--whenever such accidents came along--they happened
to the other canoe, but perhaps this excited our opponents, for there
followed periods of wildness when, if their shots struck anywhere, it
was impossible to identify the places. At such periods Eddie was likely
to claim that the cartridges were blanks, and perhaps they were. As for
Del and me, our luck never varied like that. It remained about equally
bad from day to day--just bad enough to beat the spectacular fortunes of
Eddie and Charles the Strong.
In the matter of wing-shooting, however--that is to say, shooting when
we were on the wing and any legitimate quarry came in view--my
recollection is that we ranked about alike. Neither of us by any chance
ever hit anything at all, and I have an impression that our misses were
about equally wide. Eddie may make a different claim. He may claim that
he fired oftener and with less visible result than I. Possibly he did
fire oftener, for he had a repeating rifle and I only a single shot, but
so far as the result is concerned, if he states that his bullets flew
wider of the mark, such a claim is the result of pure envy, perhaps
malice. Why, I recall one instance of a muskrat whose skin Eddie was
particularly desirous of sending to those museum folks in London--all
properly mounted, with their names (Eddie's and the muskrat's) on a neat
silver plate, so that it could stand there and do honor to us for a long
time--until the moths had eaten up everything but the plate, perhaps,
and Eddie struck the water within two or three feet of it (the muskrat,
of course) as much as a dozen times, while such shots as I let go didn't
hit anything but the woods or the sky and are, I suppose, still buried
somewhere in the quiet bosom of nature. I am glad to unload that
sentence. It was getting top-heavy, with a muskrat and moths and a
silver plate in it. I could shoot some holes in it with a little
practice, but inasmuch as we didn't get the muskrat, I will let it stand
as a stuffed specimen.
I am also glad about the muskrat. Had he perished, our pledge would have
compelled us to eat him, and although one of Eddie's text-books told a
good deal about their food value and seven different ways of cooking
them, I was averse to experimenting even with one way. I have never
really cared for muskrats since as a lad I caught twenty of them one
night in a trammel net. Up to that hour the odor of musk had never been
especially offensive to me, but twenty muskrats in a net can compound a
good deal of perfumery. We had to bury the net, and even then I never
cared much about it afterwards. The sight of it stirred my imagination,
and I was glad when it was ripped away from us by a swift current one
dark night, it being unlawful to set a trammel net in that river, and
therefore sinful, by daylight.
It was on Sand Lake that Eddie gave the first positive demonstration of
his skill as a marksman. Here, he actually made a killing. True, it was
not a wing shot, but it was a performance worthy of record. A chill wet
wind blew in upon us as we left the river, and a mist such as we had
experienced on Irving Lake, with occasional drifts of rain, shut us in.
At first it was hard to be certain that we were really on a lake, for
the sheet of water was long and narrow, and it might be only a widening
of the river. But presently we came to an island, and this we accepted
as identification. It was the customary island, larger than some, but
with the bushes below, the sentinel pines, and here and there a gaunt
old snag--bleached and dead and lifting its arms to the sky. On one of
these dead ones we made out, through the mist, a strange dark bunch
about the size of a barn door and of rather irregular formation.
Gradually nearing, we discovered the bunch to be owls--great horned
owls--a family of them, grouped on the old tree's limbs in solid
formation, oblivious to the rain, to the world, to any thought of
approaching danger.
Now, the great horned owl is legitimate quarry. The case against him is
that he is a bird of prey--a destroyer of smaller birds and an enemy of
hen roosts. Of course if one wanted to go deeply into the ethics of the
matter, one might say that the smaller birds and the chickens are
destroyers, too, of bugs and grasshoppers and things, and that a life is
a life, whether it be a bird or a bumble-bee, or even a fish-worm. But
it's hard to get to the end of such speculations as that. Besides, the
owl was present, and we wanted his skin. Eddie crept close in with his
canoe, and drew a careful bead on the center of the barn door. There
was an angry little spit of powder in the wet, a wavering movement of
the dark, mist-draped bunch, a slow heaving of ghostly pinions and four
silent, feathered phantoms drifted away into the white gloom. But there
was one that did not follow. In vain the dark wings heaved and fell.
Then there came a tottering movement, a leap forward, and
half-fluttering, half-plunging, the heavy body came swishing to the
ground.
Yet unused to the battle as he was, for he was of the younger brood, he
died game. When we reached him he was sitting upright, glaring out of
his great yellow eyes, his talons poised for defense. Even with Eddie's
bottle of new skin in reserve, it was not considered safe to approach
too near. We photographed him as best we could, and then a shot at close
range closed his brief career.
I examined the owl with considerable interest. In the first place I had
never seen one of this noble species before, and this was a beautiful
specimen. Also, his flesh, being that of a young bird, did not appeal to
warrant the expression tough as a boiled owl, which the others
remembered almost in a chorus when I referred to our agreement
concerning the food test of such game as we brought down. I don't think
any of us wanted to eat that owl. I know I didn't, but I had weakened
once--on the porcupine, it may be remembered--and the death of that
porcupine rested heavily upon me, especially when I remembered how he
had whined and grieved in the moment of dying. I think I had a notion
that eating the owl would in some measure atone for the porcupine. I
said, with such firmness as I could command, and all day I repeated at
intervals, that we would eat the owl.
We camped rather early that afternoon, for it was not pleasant traveling
in the chill mist, and the prospect of the campfire and a snug tent was
an ever-present temptation. I had suggested, also, that we ought to go
ashore in time to cook the owl for supper. It might take time to cook
him.
We did not especially need the owl. We had saved a number of choice
small trout and we were still able to swallow them when prepared in a
really palatable form. Eddie, it is true, had condemned trout at
breakfast, and declared he would have no more of them, but this may have
been because there were flapjacks. He showed no disposition to condemn
them now. When I mentioned the nice, tender owl meat which we were to
have, he really looked longingly at the trout and spoke of them as juicy
little fellows, such as he had always liked. I agreed that they would be
good for the first course, and that a bird for supper would make out a
sumptuous meal. I have never known Eddie to be so kind to me as he was
about this time. He offered me some leaders and flies and even presented
me with a silver-mounted briar-root pipe, brought all the way from
London. I took the things, but I did not soften my heart. I was born in
New England and have a conscience. I cannot be bribed like that.
I told the guides that it would be better to begin supper right away, in
order that we might not get too hungry before the owl was done. I
thought them slow in their preparations for the meal. It was curious,
too, for I had promised them they should have a piece of the bird. Del
was generous. He said he would give his to Charles. That he never really
cared much for birds, anyhow. Why, once, he said, he shot a partridge
and gave it away, and he was hungry, too. He gave it to a boy that
happened along just then, and when another partridge flew up he didn't
even offer to shoot it. We didn't take much stock in that story until it
dawned upon us that he had shot the bird out of season, and the boy had
happened along just in time to be incriminated by accepting it as a
present. It was better to have him as a partner than a witness.
As for Charles, he affected to be really eager for owl meat. He said
that all his life he had looked forward to this time. Still, he was
slow, I thought. He seemed about as eager for supper as a boy is to
carry in the evening wood. He said that one of the canoes leaked a
little and ought to be pitched right away. I said it was altogether too
damp for such work and that the canoe would wait till morning. Then he
wanted to look up a spring, though there were two or three in plain
sight, within twenty yards of the camp. I suspected at last that he was
not really anxious to cook the owl and was trying to postpone the matter
until it was too late for him (the owl) to get properly done before
bedtime. Then I became firm. I said that a forest agreement was sacred.
That we were pledged to the owl before we shot him, and that we would
keep our promise to the dead, even to the picking of his bones.
Wood was gathered then, and the fire blazed. The owl's breast--fat and
fine it looked--was in the broiler, and on the fire. There it
cooked--and cooked. Then it cooked some more and sent up an appetizing
smell. Now and then, I said I thought the time for it had come, but
there was a burden of opinion that more cooking would benefit the owl.
Meantime, we had eaten a pan or two of trout and a few other things--the
bird of course being later in the bill of fare. At most dinners I have
attended, this course is contemplated with joy. It did not seem to be on
this occasion. Eddie agreed with Del that he had never cared much for
bird, anyway, and urged me to take his share. I refused to deprive him
of it. Then he said he didn't feel well, and thought he really ought not
to eat anything more. I said grimly that possibly this was true, but
that he would eat the owl.
It was served then, fairly divided and distributed, as food is when men
are on short rations. I took the first taste--I was always
venturesome--a little one. Then, immediately, I wished I had accepted
Eddie's piece. But meantime he had tasted, too--a miserly taste--and
then I couldn't have got the rest of it for money.
For there was never anything so good as that breast of young owl. It was
tender, it was juicy, it was as delicately flavored as a partridge,
almost. Certainly it was a dainty morsel to us who had of late dealt so
largely in fish diet. Had we known where the rest of that brood of owls
had flown to we should have started after them, then and there.
Extract from my diary that night: "Eddie has been taken with
a slight cramp, and it has occurred to him that the owl
meat, though appetizing, may be poisonous. He is searching
his medicine bag for remedies. His disaster is merely
punishment for the quantity of other food he ate beforehand,
in his futile effort to escape the owl."