[Illustration: THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB AT HOME.]
_THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB SERIES._
THE
SPORTSMAN’S CLUB
IN THE SADDLE.
BY HARRY CASTLEMON,
AUTHOR OF “THE GUNBOAT SERIES,” “GO AHEAD SERIES,”
“ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES,” ETC.
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY T. COATES & CO.
FAMOUS CASTLEMON BOOKS.
=GUNBOAT SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 6 vols. 12mo.
FRANK THE YOUNG NATURALIST.
FRANK IN THE WOODS.
FRANK ON THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI.
FRANK ON A GUNBOAT.
FRANK BEFORE VICKSBURG.
FRANK ON THE PRAIRIE.
=ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
FRANK AMONG THE RANCHEROS.
FRANK IN THE MOUNTAINS.
FRANK AT DON CARLOS’ RANCH.
=SPORTSMAN’S CLUB SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB IN THE SADDLE.
THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB AFLOAT.
THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB AMONG THE TRAPPERS.
=FRANK NELSON SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
SNOWED UP.
FRANK IN THE FORECASTLE.
THE BOY TRADERS.
=BOY TRAPPER SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
THE BURIED TREASURE.
THE BOY TRAPPER.
THE MAIL-CARRIER.
=ROUGHING IT SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
GEORGE IN CAMP.
GEORGE AT THE WHEEL.
GEORGE AT THE FORT.
=ROD AND GUN SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
DON GORDON’S SHOOTING BOX.
THE YOUNG WILD FOWLERS.
ROD AND GUN CLUB.
=GO-AHEAD SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
TOM NEWCOMBE.
GO-AHEAD.
NO MOSS.
=FOREST AND STREAM SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 3 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
JOE WAYRING.
SNAGGED AND SUNK.
STEEL HORSE.
=WAR SERIES.= By HARRY CASTLEMON. 5 vols. 12mo. Cloth.
TRUE TO HIS COLORS.
RODNEY THE OVERSEER.
MARCY THE REFUGEE.
RODNEY THE PARTISAN.
MARCY THE BLOCKADE-RUNNER.
_Other Volumes in Preparation._
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
R. W. CARROLL & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Walter and Eugene Page 5
CHAPTER II.
A Midnight Alarm 24
CHAPTER III.
Bayard Bell and his Crowd 45
CHAPTER IV.
Wild-Hog Hunting 65
CHAPTER V.
Perk in a Predicament 84
CHAPTER VI.
Bayard’s Plans 105
CHAPTER VII.
Bayard visits the Schooner 129
CHAPTER VIII.
What happened there 149
CHAPTER IX.
Where Featherweight was 166
CHAPTER X.
The Friend in the Corn-Crib 187
CHAPTER XI.
The Siege 208
CHAPTER XII.
How Wilson escaped 230
CHAPTER XIII.
Perk takes a Bath 253
CHAPTER XIV.
Chase turns the Tables 270
CHAPTER XV.
The Revenue Cutter 289
THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB IN THE SADDLE.
CHAPTER I.
WALTER AND EUGENE.
Which is the pleasantest season of the year, boy reader? No doubt you
have written more than one composition on the subject, and perhaps you
will say, as most boys do, that you like winter best. If you live in the
city you can spend your leisure hours at the skating-rink; or it may be
that your father owns an ice-boat, and you take great delight in riding
in it. Your cousin Tom, who lives in the country, will tell you that
winter is the time for him, for he is fond of sleigh-riding, and sees
any amount of sport at quiltings, apple-bees, corn-huskings and surprise
parties. If you had asked Walter and Eugene Gaylord what they thought
about it, Eugene, who was a lively, talkative fellow, would have answered
you something like this:
“We see more real fun in one week during the winter time than in all the
rest of the year. The quails, that have been rearing their broods in
these fields during the summer, are in prime condition then, and if you
ever handled a shot-gun or owned a setter, you know there is no sport
in the world like shooting on the wing. Wild turkeys are plenty, also.
They come into the hills about here to feed on the beech-nuts. It is time
then to set traps for minks and to go coon-hunting. Minks are abundant
about here, and their skins are worth two dollars apiece. And then, is
there any music in the world that can equal the baying of a hound of a
clear, frosty morning? That brier patch down there covers more than two
hundred acres—father calls it his preserves—it is literally filled with
rabbits and foxes, and our club owns a pack of the best hounds in the
state. That sheet of water you see over there is an arm of the Gulf of
Mexico. I don’t exaggerate when I say that I have seen it black with wild
geese and ducks. They stay around here during the fall and winter. All
the shooting we can do will not frighten them away, for the bay is an
excellent feeding-ground, and it never freezes over. You know the winters
are not as cold down here as they are up North. Deer are plenty in the
swamp, bears are so abundant that they are really troublesome, wild hogs
you can find any day, and panthers are killed on our plantation every
winter. And then, if every other source of excitement should fail us,
there are Bayard Bell and his crowd of fellows, who are bound that the
members of our club shall not enjoy a minute’s peace if they can help
it. You see, while we were students at the Academy at Bellville last
summer, our club defeated Bayard and his crew in a four-oared race for
the championship, and that made him very angry. More than that, he wanted
to be commodore of the academy squadron, but when the election came off
he was badly beaten, and that was another thing that made him mad. He
has promised to square yards with every one of us this winter, and we
are waiting to see what he will do. I like these long evenings, too.
When the wind is whistling dismally without, and the rain and sleet are
rattling against the window-panes, isn’t it jolly to draw up in front of
a warm fire, and while away the hours with a game of chess or backgammon
with some good fellow, or listen to the stories of Uncle Dick, who has
travelled over every portion of the habitable globe? O, we always see
plenty of sport during the winter.”
Two better boys than Walter and Eugene Gaylord never lived, and none
ever had a pleasanter home or a kinder father and mother. When we say
that they were good boys, we do not mean that they were perfect. We
would not give a fig for an army of perfect boys, even if there were
such impossible things in the world; but, thank goodness, they do not
exist outside of story-books. Walter and Eugene had their faults, and
some glaring ones, too, like all other live, wide-awake boys. They had
done things they were sorry for and did not mean to do again; and, on
more than one occasion—we regret to say it, but candor compels us—they
had been seen with very long faces walking reluctantly into the library,
whither they were followed by their father, who carried in his hand
something that looked very much like an apple-tree switch. But, for all
that, they were first-rate fellows—kind, obliging, and good-tempered.
There was a year’s difference in their ages, and a great deal of
difference in their tastes, dispositions and habits. Walter, the older,
thoroughly enjoyed himself in a quiet way, and thought more of a good
book and a pair of slippers than he did of the ball club and debating
society. He owned a splendid double-barrel, and was an excellent shot on
the wing; but he had been known to sit for hours behind his brush-blind
on the banks of the bayou, and watch a flock of canvas-backs, which were
sporting about in the water within easy range of his gun, without firing
a shot at them. He was studying their habits, he said. Eugene, on the
other hand, was a wild, uneasy fellow, and he could not possibly enjoy
himself without plenty of noise. He was a capital sailor, and nothing
suited him better than to stand at the helm of the Banner (that was the
name of the yacht he and his brother owned, and a swift, beautiful little
craft she was) while she was bounding over the waves of the bay before
a stiff breeze with all her canvas spread. He was an enthusiastic and
skilful fisherman, a good shot, and woe to the squirrel or duck that
showed its head within range of his Smith & Wesson rifle. It made no
difference to him what the “habits” of the game were, so long as he
secured a respectable bunch to carry home. He had more than once been
capsized in the bay; had broken his arm in an attempt to climb one of
the lofty elm trees in the yard; had tumbled over cliffs while searching
for sea-gulls’ nests; and had fallen into quick-sands, while stalking
pelicans in the swamp, and narrowly escaped with his life; but he was
hale and hearty still, and none the worse for his adventures.
Walter and Eugene lived in the state of Louisiana, about forty miles from
the thriving village of Bellville, in a large stone house which was so
completely concealed by the thick shrubbery and trees that surrounded
it, that not even its chimneys could be seen from the road. A gravelled
carriage-way led from the gate to the dwelling, and then turning abruptly
to the right ran down a steep bank to the boat-house. In front of the
boat-house a stone jetty extended out into the water; and at the end of
it was anchored a buoy, to which, had you been a visitor at the Gaylord
mansion during the summer, you would have seen moored a rakish little
schooner that held a high place in the estimation of our young friends.
And had you seen that same schooner under way, you would have noticed
that a Commodore’s broad pennant floated from her mast-head; for Walter
Gaylord was commander of the Columbia Yacht Club, and the Banner was his
flagship. At the time our story begins, however, the yachting season
was over, and the schooner, being too large to be stowed away in the
boat-house, had been hauled into a neighboring bayou and hidden among
the bushes, where she would be effectually protected from the fury of
the storms that visited the coast during the winter. She had sailed
many a race during the previous summer, and the pair of gold-mounted
field-glasses which occupied a prominent place on the centre-table in the
boy’s room, and which they never neglected to show to visitors, proved
that she had been victorious in at least one of them. Her young masters
thought that her work for the year was over, but it turned out otherwise.
She was destined before the winter was ended, to accomplish something
that far surpassed all her former exploits, and to sail in waters and
visit countries that none of her crew had ever seen before.
On the floor of the boat-house lay a long narrow object covered with
canvas to protect it from the damp and dust. It was a four-oared shell,
the property of the SPORTSMAN’S CLUB. There were people in the village
who could say that they had seen the schooner beaten in a fair race,
but not one who could say the same of the Spray. Whether her success
was owing to the boat itself, or to the muscle and long wind of those
who handled the oars, is a question. The club gave all the credit to
the boat; and you would have had hard work to make them believe that
she did not go faster, and skim more lightly over the waves, ever since
that memorable afternoon in August when she wrested the champion colors
from the Emma, which everybody imagined to be the swiftest boat about
the village. Bayard Bell, the owner and stroke of the Emma, was highly
enraged over his defeat. He forthwith challenged the Spray to another
trial of speed, and sent to New Orleans for his cousins Will and Seth
Bell, who belonged to a boat club there, and who considered themselves
crack oarsmen, to come down and train his crew and pull in the race.
The contest came off in the presence of the village people and all the
students of the Academy, and the Spray walked away from the Emma and her
picked crew as easily as though the latter had been standing still. Then
Bayard was angrier than ever, and his city cousins, who had expected
to win an easy victory over the “country bumpkins,” were astonished.
The former declared that the Spray had been rowed in a race for the
last time, and Will and Seth said that if they could not beat her by
fair means they could by foul, and that when the next season opened the
village people would see the champion colors restored to the Emma, to
which they rightfully belonged. This threat reached the ears of Walter
and his crew, who, knowing what a vindictive, persevering fellow they
had to deal with, kept a close watch over their beloved boat, and never
allowed a day to pass without spending half an hour in swinging their
Indian clubs and dumb-bells.
Outside the boat-house, and turned up against it, was the skiff which
Walter and Eugene used when they went hunting on the bay. On the ground
near it lay a pile of bushes which were used as a blind to conceal the
hunters when they were pulling toward the game. The window of their room
looked out upon the bay, and if they discovered a flock of geese or ducks
near the shore, it was but the work of a few minutes to launch the
skiff, put up the blind, and be off. In this way they had obtained many
an excellent dinner.
About a hundred yards further up the bank, to the left of the boat-house,
were the stables where Mr. Gaylord kept his riding and some of his
farm-horses, and the kennels which afforded shelter to his hounds.
Horses and hounds were made much of in those days, and Mr. Gaylord and
his brother, Uncle Dick, took as much pride in theirs as any old English
huntsman. Walter and Eugene were well provided for in this particular,
and their saddle-nags and dogs were the envy of all the young hunters in
the parish. Walter rode a large, milk-white charger, which was like his
master in more respects than one. He was as steady as a plough-horse,
afraid of nothing, was generally very deliberate in his movements, and on
ordinary occasions went along at a snail’s pace, his head down, his eyes
half-closed, and his ears bobbing back and forth with every step he made.
But, after all, there was plenty of spirit in him. Let him once hear the
hounds in full cry, or let his rider tighten the reins and give him even
the slightest touch with the spur, and the old horse’s head would come
up, and he would step off in a way that made it exceedingly difficult
for any but a fleet-footed nag to keep pace with him. Eugene’s horse was
a different sort of animal altogether. He was a small, light-bodied roan,
fiery and vicious, and so restless that he never would stand still long
enough for his rider to become fairly seated in the saddle. But the two
got along very well together. The horse always wanted his own way, and
Eugene was quite willing that he should have it.
There were seven dogs in their pack. Six of them were common
deer-hounds—large tan-colored animals, staunch and swift; and when they
once opened on a trail, how they would make the woods ring with their
music! The other was an Irish greyhound, a present from Uncle Dick. He
stood nearly three feet high at the shoulders, and was as fleet as the
wind. He was good-natured enough generally, but savage when aroused.
The country about Mr. Gaylord’s plantation was but thinly populated, and
wild in the extreme. His nearest neighbor, Mr. Bell, lived three miles
away, and the nearest settlement was at Bellville, forty miles distant.
Mr. Gaylord’s family had but little intercourse with the family of Mr.
Bell. The younger members engaged in a pitched battle occasionally; and
their fathers, when they met on the road, merely saluted each other in a
dignified manner, and passed without speaking. Mr. Bell did not seem to
be on good terms with anybody except a brother who lived in New Orleans
(Will’s father and Seth’s), and who was equally unpopular with himself.
He had at one time stood high in the community (the village of Bellville
was named after him), but of late he had gone down hill rapidly in the
estimation of his former associates. There was a mystery surrounding
him that none could penetrate. He was engaged in business of some kind,
but no one knew what it was. For two years he had been making money
rapidly—much faster than he could have made it by cultivating his orange
plantation—and the settlers had at last become suspicious, and hinted
that he was engaged in some traffic that the authorities would one day
put a stop to.
Walter and Eugene were students at the Bellville Academy—or rather
they _had_ been until a few weeks ago when the Fire King stepped in
and destroyed the buildings, and gave the scholars a long vacation.
Our heroes regarded this as a great calamity, and so did every one of
the students, for they loved the Academy and all its surroundings. It
was no wonder that they held the institution in high esteem, for the
faculty were men who understood the nature of boys, and knowing how to
combine profit with pleasure, they had made the school a sort of modern
Athens, where muscles were cultivated as well as brains. So varied were
the exercises and amusements that the most exacting students could
not fail to find something to interest them. For the sober, studious
ones who preferred quiet sport, there was the yacht club, and also the
classes in Geology, Botany, and Natural History, the members of which
spent a portion of each school term camping out in the woods with
their professors; and for the active boys, who delighted in violent
exercises, there were ball clubs, boat clubs, a gymnasium, and boxing
and fencing masters. Walter and Eugene were lonesome in their country
home, and looked forward with impatience to the coming summer, when the
new buildings would be ready for occupation. Uncle Dick, however, hinted
that it would be a long time before they, or any of the members of the
Sportsman’s Club, would enter the new academy as students; but when the
boys asked him what he meant, he poked them in the ribs with his finger,
looked very wise, and said nothing.
The house in which Walter and Eugene lived looked like any other ordinary
country house on the outside, and on the inside too, for that matter,
except in one particular. Away up in the third story, next to the roof,
was a room, the like of which, we venture to say, was never seen in
any other dwelling. It belonged to Uncle Dick. It was a neat, cosy
apartment, and if you had been conducted into it blindfolded, you would
have thought, when you were permitted to use your eyes again, that you
were in the cabin of some splendid vessel. Indeed, Uncle Dick intended
that it should look as much like one as possible. He was an old sailor,
cherishing an affection for the blue water that nothing could change, and
he had been so long accustomed to life on shipboard that he found it hard
work to stay ashore. His cabin reminded him of his ocean home, and it did
not require a very great stretch of imagination for him to fancy himself
still on board his vessel.
The apartment was just about the size of the cabin of an ordinary
merchantman. There were three small windows on one side of it, and under
them was a sofa, upon which Uncle Dick took his after-dinner nap as
regularly as he did while he was the commander of a whaler. The windows
on the other two sides were “bull’s eyes”—round, thick plates of glass
enclosed in iron frames and set into the wall. Uncle Dick always kept
these bull’s eyes open in fair weather, but as surely as a storm came up
he would close and fasten them. One would hardly suppose that a great
deal of rain could come in at these small openings, let the tempest be
never so furious; but Uncle Dick always thought of the waves he had seen
on the ocean. He said he did not want the sea to come rushing into his
cabin and spoiling all his fine furniture. When we remind you that the
house was three stories high, and tell you that it stood upon the top of
a hill at least five hundred yards from the bay, you will know how much
probability there was that salt water would ever wash in at those bull’s
eyes.
There were no doors in the cabin; at least such doors as we have in our
houses. A small ladder on one side of the room led up to a trap-door in
the roof (the “deck,” Uncle Dick always called it), and that was the only
way one could go in and out of the cabin. There was one door that opened
into Uncle Dick’s state-room, but that was not hung on hinges; it worked
on a slide.
The old sailor turned up his nose at a bedstead, and always slept in a
bunk. His looking-glass was fastened to the wall; his wash-stand was held
firmly in its place by screws; his centre-table, on which was always to
be found Bowditch’s Navigator, a chart or two, and a telescope, was also
screwed fast to the floor, and provided with a raised edge to keep the
articles from falling off when the old mansion was rocking and tumbling
about in a gale. Walter and Eugene always laughed when they saw this
contrivance. The idea that a solid stone house, that had withstood the
storms of a quarter of a century, could so far forget itself as to rock
about in the wind sufficiently to displace any of Uncle Dick’s furniture,
was highly amusing to them. But it was no laughing matter with the old
sailor. He was in earnest about it; and if he had been on the point of
starting with the mansion on a voyage across the Atlantic, he could not
have taken more pains to get everything in his cabin in readiness for the
storms he would be likely to meet on the way.
There was one thing that did not look exactly ship-shape, and that was a
huge book-case which occupied one side of the cabin. A portion of it was
filled with books, and the rest with what Uncle Dick called his “relics.”
There were at least a hundred articles of every description in that
book-case, and there was not one among them that was not associated in
the mind of the old sailor with some exciting event. For example, there
was a harpoon, such as whalers use, with a long rope attached, which
was laid down in Flemish coil on the bottom of the book-case. Whenever
Uncle Dick looked at those articles it recalled to his mind the time
when that harpoon was buried in the side of a huge sperm whale, and that
rope caught around his leg and he was dragged into the water, and down,
down, it seemed to him, almost to the bottom of the ocean. There was a
condor of the Andes, stuffed and mounted, and looking so life-like that
one almost expected to see it spread its immense wings and come crashing
through the glass doors of the book-case. That reminded Uncle Dick of
a startling adventure in South America. In the same compartment was a
lance, with a bright iron head, and a long, slender shaft, ornamented
with a portion of a horse’s tail. That lance had come from the desert
of Sahara; and if you could have examined Uncle Dick’s right arm, you
would have found, among the flags, ships, anchors and other emblems with
which it was decorated, a long, ragged scar from a wound made by that
very lance. A little further on hung the bridle, saddle and turban of the
Bedouin who had handled the weapon when Uncle Dick received that wound.
There were the snow-shoes on which he had travelled over the plains of
the Red River of the North, and under them was the Indian canoe that
had carried him and a companion from Fort Churchill, one of the most
northern posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to the Red River settlement.
In the next compartment was the Esquimaux sled in which he had traversed
many a mile of the ice-fields of Greenland. Further on was the dragoon’s
carbine he had shouldered at the breaking out of the Mexican war, and the
major’s sword and sash he had worn when he entered the city of Mexico
with General Scott. And so we might go on for a whole chapter, and still
not notice all the different articles in the book-case. Besides these,
there were numerous others scattered about the room. In every corner,
hung upon the walls, and suspended from the ceiling, the eye rested on
tomahawks, bows and arrows, and scalping-knives from the plains; sharks’
teeth and pearl-oyster shells from the South Pacific; reindeers’ antlers
and harpoons from Hudson’s Bay; and relics from Herculaneum and Pompeii,
which Uncle Dick had succeeded in smuggling out in spite of the vigilance
of the guard. In short, the cabin was a perfect curiosity shop, and was
a never-failing source of amusement and instruction to the boys who were
permitted to enter it, for at every visit they found something new to
admire and wonder at. The Sportsman’s Club regarded the room as their
headquarters. They visited it almost every night to listen to the old
sailor’s stories; and that was a privilege they prized highly, for it was
one that Uncle Dick granted to none except his nephews and their most
intimate friends.