left side was, of course, the one exposed to me; but we were so “mixed
up” that I could take no accurate aim at his heart, and just thrust
blindly and madly at that stretch of mottled fur.
Nothing will ever dim my recollection of that desperate struggle; and
yet I seemed in a sort of trance. You have had nightmares, wherein some
savage beast pursued you, and you slammed vain doors on him which he
brushed open, and fired ineffective rifles at him whose diminished pop
did not affect him in the least; and, do what you would, nothing availed
against that implacable danger. So it was with me. I seemed under a
spell.
Those awful claws were tearing me everywhere; that fatal head was
struggling to break down my tiring arm; and the desperate thrusts of the
knife with all the force of my right arm seemed not even to penetrate the
tough hide. They went deep enough, as I found later, but at the moment I
was sure they hardly scratched him.
Since that day I have been through a great many of the things of whose
suspense we say, “They seemed eternities,” but never one, I think, that
seemed so endless as that. And yet it could hardly have lasted a minute.
I was growing very weak. Blood was running down in my boots, and my weary
left arm was no longer rigid. My right was no longer fully under control,
and once, when the knife glanced a rib, it nearly flew from my hand.
Once, too, I struck high, and the cat caught my right wrist between his
savage teeth and tore out a piece. Was he invulnerable? I began actually
to believe so—to fancy that, after all, it must be a hideous dream.
You may imagine from that into what a state my mind had come. But still
I plied the knife, and still with cramped and trembling arm held off the
creature’s jaws.
And then, on a sudden, a great wave of joy swept over me, and I yelled
madly. The curving claws, set deep in my back and breast, relaxed. It was
only the least bit in the world, but I could feel the exquisite pain of
that slight withdrawal; and in another instant they came out altogether,
and my foe fell limp upon the rocks beside me, where he never moved again.
I looked at him once; my eyes grew dim, and I fell across him.
When I recovered consciousness, we were lying in a heap, wet with our
common blood. I crawled a couple of feet to the brook, and the icy water
revived me, so that at last I could rise and limp about the field of our
strange battle.
The cat was a mass of wounds; and as I counted the eleven fatal thrusts,
I marvelled at his vitality and pluck—and very heartily respected them,
too. Any one of ten of them would have finally killed him, but he had
kept his hold to the very last, which had sunk deep into his heart.
And such a small beast to attack the lord of creation! I do not think
he weighed over thirty pounds; but what a model of compact strength and
agility! His skin was so slashed as to be absolutely unsavable; but I
kept his scalp a long time, till the moths destroyed it.
As for myself, I was in little more attractive shape than he. Of my stout
duck coat and trousers only the right half remained. My duck vest and
heavy flannel shirt boasted little but a few shreds two-thirds of the way
around my body. I was half-naked, and my breast, back, left side and left
thigh were laced with deep, bleeding gashes.
There is only one thing about that day which I do not remember; and that
is, how I got back that ten miles to camp. But somehow I got there; for
when I awoke next morning, very weak and stiff—for of all wounds I know
of none so painful as those inflicted by a cat—I was under my roof of
birch bark, and a spotted scalp lay on the sand beside me.
A Tame Deer.
A Tame Deer.
Buck deer, at certain seasons, or when wounded, may be very ugly
customers; and in hunting East and West, I have had several unpleasant
experiences with them. The very first deer I ever killed, up in the New
Hampshire mountains, came wonderfully close to killing me—after his hind
leg was broken at the hip and I thought it was quite safe to close in to
finish him. How he literally “wiped the ground” with me!
Others of his kind have given me trouble and danger in varying degrees,
and in a variety of ways; and I have known several persons killed by
them. But the “closest call” a deer ever gave me, and one of the most
terrible struggles in all my hunting and wandering, befell me in the
heart of the city of Los Angeles; and the hero was a “tame” buck.
It was many years ago, at a time when my passion for pets, always strong,
had unusual opportunities for gratification in one of the moss-gathering
intervals of a usually rolling stone. Behind the house (where a
half-million dollar block stands to-day) was a good-sized yard, for a
city lot, well shaded with eucalyptus trees, and with a substantial shed.
Here was plenty of room for pets, and we acquired a variety of them.
First in our affection was my precious old cat Beauty, which had come
with the family from Ohio. There was also a horse, which boarded at the
livery stable; and a fine Danish hound that had adopted us. This did very
well for a while. But during a vacation run over New Mexico, I wounded a
young eagle; and, seeing that his wing would soon heal under proper care,
I brought him home and kept him in a leash on the back porch, where he
throve admirably.
Then someone presented me with a barn-owl, and he kept the eagle company.
Rabbits have always pleased me; and presently I made some hutches, and in
time had them peopled with a dozen rabbits and guinea-pigs. In a cage in
my study lived a couple of handsome rattlesnakes; and one day I brought
home in a slatted box a tiny wildcat—at which a patient wife cried:
“Don’t get anything more, Charlie! We can’t move now without stepping on
a pet; and they are too much care for me, with you gone at the office
all day and almost all night!”
But in spite of herself she grew very fond of the wildcat baby, which
would lie in her lap and purr with the most ridiculously disproportionate
voice. It could hardly have been a month old; and had I been the hunter
who found it in the Sierra Madre, it should never have been taken from
its fierce mother at such an age—for it had not been weaned, evidently.
Its body was not as large as that of a lean house-cat, but its legs were
quite one-half longer, so that it had rather the appearance of being on
stilts—and very uncertain, wobbly ones, too. Its feet were twice the size
of Beauty’s, and its voice, in growling, was so heavy and so savage that
one could scarce believe it issued from that ungainly little frame.
It was very gentle with its mistress, purred sonorously whenever she
petted it, and went stumbling all over the house at her heels. Nor was it
hostile to the young lady who completed our family, not half so afraid
of Beauty as Beauty was of this wild cousin. But with me it would have
nothing to do. As I was then city editor of the morning newspaper, and
was very little at home, it evidently looked upon me as an interloper,
and at a glance of me would snarl and show fight as sincerely as a grown
lynx. And it was an enemy not altogether to be laughed at, as there are
still scars to testify.
Once it climbed up and hid among the springs of my bed, and the heavy
buck gloves I put on for the task of dislodging it did not save me from
ugly tastes of those keen teeth and claws. Perhaps it is quite as well
that Tiger did not survive his infancy, but died of congestion at four
or five months old. Had he grown up, without a change of heart, he might
have become troublesome.
With this much of a household on our hands, we might very reasonably
have been content; and so probably should have been but for one of those
“chances of a lifetime” which are always befalling the enthusiast. A
fellow down in the Mexican quarter of the city had a pet deer, and,
learning of my hobby, pestered me to buy—“dirt cheap, Sir!”
“No, I don’t want any deer. Couldn’t take care of him.”
“Oh, but he is such a beauty, Sir, and tame as a sheep, and $10 is
nothing. Just come and look at him!”
Well, it could do no harm to go and look at a pretty animal; so I
went—with a virtuous resolve not to acquire another single pet.
The result was what might have been expected. He _was_ a beauty. There
is almost nothing handsomer than a perfect Black-tail, and this was
an excellent specimen—full grown, though young, with one fork on his
dagger-sharp antlers, and gentle as a kitten. The first look of those
liquid eyes made my resolution tremble; and when the lovely creature came
and nestled his face into my vest with perfect confidence, I was lost.
I could not even wait to send an express-man for him. “Here is your $10,”
said I; “and now give me a rope to lead him home.”
The rope was put around that graceful neck, and I started off in high
glee. He followed me like a lamb through the back streets, paying little
attention to people or wagons—for he had passed most of his life in
the city—and much less abashed than his new master by the sensation we
created. Once safely at home, I gave him a strong leather collar and a
long steel chain, the other end of which hooked into a staple in the side
of the shed.
Bonito, as we named him, seemed very content in his new home. At night he
had a comfortable bed in the shed, and by day his place outside. There
was plenty of alfalfa and young wheat, which we had cut for him from the
rabbits’ patch, and bread and sugar from the house; and every morning my
habit was to loose his chain and let him wander about the yard with me.
He had a great curiosity about the rabbits and the owl, a fair
understanding with Giallo, the dog, a supreme contempt for the little
wildcat—which had been transferred to a big cage in the yard and roared
at us whenever we approached. As for the three human members of the
family, he was hail-fellow-well-met with us all. He kept putting himself
forward to be petted, delighted to be scratched behind the ears, and
would rather eat from our hands than from his trough.
For five or six months Bonito was the pride of the family. He had grown
very fat, and was sleek and handsome as one could wish. But with the
advance of summer he turned misanthrope. He began to paw a considerable
hollow by his post, and now and again stamped his hoof on the ground
with that peculiarly audible rap which with wild deer is an alarm-signal
sufficient to stampede a quietly grazing herd. Then he began to show some
contempt for being petted, and several times pushed us away in a manner
nothing short of rude.
At last I came home one night to find my wife much worked up. She had
gone out that afternoon to feed Bonito and was giving him an apple, when
suddenly he lowered his head and sprang at her. Luckily the sharp horns
passed either side the slender waist, pinning her against the shed, but
not hurting her; and with much presence of mind, instead of fainting or
screaming or struggling, she scratched beneath his ears soothingly, and
he at last let her escape unharmed.
“H’m! Well, don’t you go near him again,” said I. “I’ll attend to him
myself, if that’s his temper;” and I forthwith procured a new chain.
Several times in the next few weeks he made lunges at me, but again
would seem gentle and would enjoy a petting. Against my wife, however,
he appeared to have taken a sudden grudge, and would tug on his chain at
sight of her.
One Saturday she went to visit friends at the beach, and I was to follow
on the half-past eight train next morning. It was four o’clock in the
morning when I saw the paper to press and came home, and at seven
o’clock got up to care for the pets before leaving.
When I went out to the yard, the deer was not there. The staple was torn
out, and the drag of the chain enabled me to find where Bonito had jumped
the fence and made off. I trailed him several blocks, and at last found
him impudently grazing on a handsome lawn on Hill Street.
He did not attempt to elude me, and when I took the end of the chain he
followed as meekly as you please, only stopping now and then to nibble a
bit of grass by the sidewalk.
Unluckily just then I pulled out my watch. Seven-fifty! Time to hurry
up—and when Don Bonito stooped to graze, I leaned back on the chain and
brought him along. Five or six times this happened, and I fancied he was
not quite so meek. Hungry he could not be—it was just his stupid notion
to take a bite by the wayside; and my train would not wait for that.
So each time that he halted, a steady but resistless pull brought him
sliding forward, brace his feet as he would.
The last time I pulled there was a surprise. For an instant he held
back with all his strength, and then, suddenly hunching his body like
a panther, he gave a great bound at me. Losing balance at this sudden
yielding of the weight, I sprawled on the sidewalk, and Bonito pounced
upon me like a cat, cutting my leg with his sharp hoofs, and aiming his
sharper horns at my ribs. It was as well that he had to do with no novice
at catch-as-can wrestling, for without those years of keen practice I
never should have come out from the next fifteen minutes—if, indeed, from
the first onslaught. As it was, I clutched a horn at the first pass,
within six inches of my side; and then, capturing the other, readily got
my feet.
This head-lock counter-balanced his 20 pounds’ superiority in weight, but
the very fact of being overpowered made him beside himself. He began to
fight with inconceivable fury, twisting till he seemed like to break his
neck in the effort to free his horns or get at me with his feet.
It began to appear that he had me in something like a “box.” It was
equally out of the question to let him go or try to lead him farther.
Every motion or snort of the infuriated animal showed that his one
thought now was not escape, but revenge.
Still, confident in my muscles—like steel yet from a
thirty-five-hundred-mile walk across the continent—I had no
apprehensions. The only thing necessary was to take him home in such
fashion that he could not hurt me; and once there, the chain would take
care of him.
So I got my left arm locked in a chancery hold around his neck, my right
hand still firmly holding his right horn, which worked uncomfortably
close to my stomach, and thus, lifting him so that his fore feet were off
the ground, I started homeward.
But there had been a reckoning without the host. The first two blocks
went fairly, though in an unceasing violent struggle—rather to the
scandal of the two or three passers we met, so early for Sunday morning
in that quiet part of the town. But when I came with my prisoner to Fifth
Street, it was with the consciousness that I was pretty well worn out,
and that he, in spite of the strangle-lock, seemed to be growing fresher.
Each moment he fought with new rage and vigor, sometimes driving me
against the fence, sometimes over the curb; lunging fiercely with those
sinewy hind-legs, and striking wildly with the pointed fore-hoofs, whose
dangerous effectiveness every hunter knows.
The way we wrestled and fought over the next six or seven hundred feet
might have been amusing to bystanders, but became terrible to me. It
was not for the bruises and gashes I got, nor for the breathless thumps
against fences and trees, nor for the being violently thrown several
times. I kept his head in chancery, and these small hurts were not much
more than one expects to get in a good bout of catch-as-can with a human
adversary.
As long as I could keep that deadlock on his neck I was perfectly safe
from any serious injury, but the grim certainty confronted me that I
could not keep it much longer. My arm began to give at his fiercest
lunges, my breath and heart were alike stampeding, and I felt creeping
over me the dizzy faintness of utter exhaustion. Never had wrestler given
me such tussle before—though I have worked two hours “on the carpet” at a
bout.
Down we went again at the last corner, and again a glancing hoof cut me
as I fought back to my feet. I dropped the horn and clasped the left
wrist with my right hand, drawing the arm tighter under the brute’s
throat, at once to hold him surer and cut off his wind. But the broad
leather collar seemed to save him. A burly fellow passed. “Help me with
this deer!” I panted; but he looked at the savage struggles of Bonito and
hurried on.
At the very gate the beast bore me down once more; but once more I
struggled up and dragged him in. We swayed and fought along, tearing up
the gravel-walks and flower-beds, and at last came to the shed. I could
barely stand, and Bonito dragged me hither and yon. My eyes were hazy,
and the cramped arms began to slip. Would Virginia never come? I yelled
again, and just then she came running out.
“Fasten—his chains—around the post!” I had just breath to gasp; and, like
the brave girl she was, she did it—in what seemed to me forever, while
the deer and I fought the last bout.
“Run!” I cried, when the chain was at last secured; and when she was in
the back door, I dragged Bonito to the end of his chain, loosed my hold
and fell backward. I am positive that I could not have held him twenty
seconds longer to save my life.
He slacked back on the tether and hurled himself forward till the steel
links cracked again, and his eyes fairly started with the pressure on his
throat. But the chain held, and his frantic efforts, which continued as
long as I was in sight, were in vain. Had a link parted then, he would
have had an easy victim. A few minutes’ breathing-spell made me over, and
by a bit of good fortune I caught the next train, and reached Long Beach
not far behind time—though with various large rents and blood stains on
my clothing.
The next day a butcher was summoned to rid us of so dangerous a pet. He
dealt Bonito a fearful blow on the forehead with a hatchet. The deer
dropped as if shot, and lay motionless; and the butcher stepped forward
with his knife. But like a flash the brute was on his feet again—and
on his assailant, whose coat was pierced front and back by the sharp
antlers. It was a remarkable chance that they had not entered his abdomen.
The butcher’s fat, rosy face turned a sickly gray. He kept his distance
after that, and with a long-handled ax made thrice sure of the game
before he would venture again within the radius of that chain.
Bonito dressed one hundred and fifty-six pounds—so you see he was no
feather-weight for a wrestler. He was fat, and they said very good
venison. At home we could not think of eating the meat of a former pet;
but after his exploits, our sentiment did not go so far as to make us
sorry that someone else could.
And since then I have never had an ambition to get another “tame deer.”
The Rebel Double Runner.
The Rebel Double Runner.
When I was a lad in a lonely New Hampshire village, in the memorable year
of 1863, a great many fathers and uncles and older brothers were off at
some fearful and dimly-comprehended distance, dressed in blue, and, as we
reckoned it, fighting battles daily.
How brave they had looked one morning, as they left town, marching with
fife and drum along the crazy sidewalk, and off down the “Depot Hill!”
After that, the games at school and after school took a decidedly warlike
tinge. Wooden swords and muskets largely usurped the place of top and
ball; and proud was the small boy whose grand-dad would lend him a real
sword of 1812, or an ancient militia shako.
When the stern New Hampshire winter came on, with its sleighing and
coasting and skating, military evolutions were somewhat curtailed—but
not altogether. There were snow forts and snow battles; white-blocked
Sumters that defied the assault of the enemy.
Patriotic feeling ran riot; and when one young school-fellow, named Tip,
espoused the Southern cause for fun, and began to press our ramparts
sore, gaining recruits every day by his sheer audacity, there came to
be snow-balls slightly thawed and then left out over night to turn to
ice—and, as a result, some dangerous casualties on the battle-field.
The very opposite of Tip in many ways was Mat Marks. Tip was restless,
sometimes reckless, always full of mischief, but one of the squarest and
least self-conscious of boys. His sudden “turning Rebel,” when he could
hardly draft rebels enough to make the holding of our forts against them
half-way interesting, was from no lack of as good patriotism as ours.
But Tip liked excitement, and was less vain than most of us; and without
a second thought of any prejudice that he might excite because of
this boyish enterprise, he abandoned the fort and took command of the
enemy—“just to make it interesting.”
And, though he was always overwhelmingly outnumbered, interesting enough
he made it for “Us Unions” before he finished.
Mat, on the other hand, while in a way as active and enterprising as Tip,
was much bound to the traditions—not from any principle or understanding
of them, but because he liked to be on the popular side, and at the head
of it, too; for he had a remarkably good opinion of himself.
Thanks to his diplomacy, he counted more followers than any other lad
in town, and was fully satisfied of the justice of his preëminence. He
liked to deem himself “a born leader of men,” such as he read of; and
I have often wondered, since, that we so long and so unquestioningly
obeyed his smooth dictatorship. He was always “organizing”—the snow-ball
battles were the outcome of his genius—and we carried out his orders with
remarkable fidelity.
With the twentieth of December came a three-foot fall of snow, and in
a few days it was hard packed on every highway, like a squeaky, white
pavement. No more skating now—the sled was to be king for the next two
months. For a few days everybody coasted, hit or miss; and the long slide
swarmed like an ant-hill going crazy. But then the administrative mind
of Mat began to work. Everyone sliding down hill on his own hook and
straggling back at will—this was altogether too puerile and unorganized!
So Mat called a council of war.
“Say, boys,” he said, “I’ll tell you what let’s do! Instead of going
higgledy-piggledy at it, like a lot of girls, let’s organize the coasting
in good shape. We’ll have our rules and signals and right of way, just
like a railroad, and a switch at the tannery corner so the small boys
can go on to the toll-bridge, carrying supplies for the army, and the
express-trains can turn off to the depot and take troops to the front.
“Then, too, I think father’ll let me have old Nell, and we can make her
haul back all the sleds in a string, and let fellows have turns riding
her down to meet us again. So that’ll get rid of the meanest part of
it—the pulling our sleds up hill. Besides, we’re all the time having
trouble with teams now; but if they all knew we were coming down in a
steady string, they’d keep out of the way, and do their sledding only
when the coast was clear. What do you fellows think?”
“Good enough!” “That’s the way!” “All right!” cried the crowd, in various
voices, but with one mind. But when the exclamations were over, Tip
tilted his sharp face a bit and said:
“Well, what are you going to do while Nell is getting down hill? Sit in
the snow-drift there at the depot and rub your ears? Strikes me it’s
better to turn around and climb back, and keep warm, ’stead of waiting
there half an hour to freeze. And s’posing some team that didn’t know
about our all comin’ down together was to get in the way? Then we’d be
apt to get tangled up with each other and go to smash.”
“Huh!” retorted Mat, sharply; “I guess you’re scared. But you don’t have
to join us. If the rest say to go in, I guess we can get along without
you. What do you say, fellows? Shall we do it?”
“’Course we will!” was the chorus; and Mat looked triumphantly at
his rival—for there was no denying that Mat reckoned as a rival, and
therefore a foe, anyone who didn’t agree with him, as Tip generally did
not. Tip returned the glance coolly and answered:
“Why, you fellows do as you like, of course—I ain’t bossing you. But you
can count me out from any such goose-tag as that.”
“We wouldn’t have you anyhow!” cried Mat, nettled at this comparing them
to a flock of geese waddling one after the other. “We don’t care to have
any traitors in our crowd.”
“Yah, you old Rebel!” piped little Bill Burpee, taking his clew as usual;
and several others echoed what was then the most dreadful word in our
vocabulary.
“I ain’t a Rebel, and you know it!” Tip answered, warmly. “I guess my
father’s fighting as hard as any of yours—and he ain’t staying home to
tend grocery stores, like Mat’s!” with which parting shot he walked off
scornfully and quite alone.