A La California. Albert S. Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ on an evil day he visited the village of St. Charles, on the occasion of the visit of a circus to the place, and getting unusually full of ginger-pop and such mild stimulants, in an unguarded moment let out the secret and blasted that glorious reputation in an instant. He had seen a doe drinking out of a creek at the foot of a bluff some twenty feet in height, and in the wild excitement of the moment got the rifle to his shoulder, shut his eyes, set his teeth like a child in a fit, and pulled trigger. To his utter astonishment he saw the doe bound away untouched, and at the same instant a glorious buck pitched headlong from the top of the bluff into the creek, shot dead as a door nail by a bullet through the head. The buck had ​been looking down on the doe, and Wheeler had never seen him at all. That let him out as a deer-huntist.

      It is not absolutely necessary that the game in sight should be a buck or doe, to give a green hunter the "buck fever." Prairie-chickens suddenly starting up around a man for the first time will not unfrequently produce a severe attack. I remember with a tender regard my old hunting friend and companion of other days, Len Huegunin, of Chicago, one of the gamest sportsmen I have ever known. He shot his left arm off gunning for ducks in the Calumet Marshes, but his right never forgot its cunning, and years thereafter he was one of the crack shots of the Garden City. One day Len was persuaded against his better judgment to go out on the prairie and initiate a green Bostonian in the mysteries of prairie-chicken shooting. When the dog took up the scent of the first covey, Len followed upon one side of an Osage orange hedge and his companion on the other. The chickens were concealed in the grass on the Bostonian's side of the hedge, and in an instant they were all off at once, flying, bur-r-r-r-r-r-r, bur-r-r-r-r-r, bur-r-r-r-r-r-r, up from around his feet and skurrying off right and left in all directions. Without the remotest idea of what he was doing or wanted to do, the startled Bostonian fired both barrels into the air at random, and with one of them bored a hole about the size of a saw log through the hedge and perforated old Len's coat, vest, and pants, to say nothing of his hide, with about ten thousand—more or less—No. 7. ​Now Len was a man of few words but prompt action. As quick as a flash his gun was at his shoulder, and bang, bang, it went in less time than I can write it. The Bostonian jumped about three feet high as each barrel was discharged, and yelled, as soon as he could get breath, "Why, confound you! what the d—l are you doing? You have peppered me all over with shot, and hang me if I don't believe you meant it! If I had some buckshot here, blame me if I wouldn't give you a dose, if that is your little game!" Len's reply came quick from between teeth set hard on a wire cartridge, the mate to which he was jamming down into the gun, which he held upright between his knees, having but one hand to work with. "Well, d—n you, that is my game, and if you are on it, the quicker you get about it the better! I'm loading with buckshot cartridges already!" The timely arrival of a mutual friend saved the Bostonian from a dose of "BB"; but Len had enough of that chicken-pie, and went home at once full of wrath and small shot, the most disgusted man on the continent of America. To this day—if Len is still in the land of the living—you have but to ask Len to go out with a green Bostonian on a chicken-hunt, to get up a first-class fight on the instant. Len was three weeks at work with his fingers, a jack-knife, and a pair of tweezers digging out those shot, swearing a blue streak all the time, and the Bostonian went home with his body so full of lead that he never dared take a swimming bath from that day forth.

      It is a painful fact, but a fact nevertheless, that ​hunters will lie, occasionally; I have hunted somewhat myself, and I know it. Old S. used to keep a hotel and drive stage on the San Mateo and Pescadero road. He had hunted more or less all his life. One day he was telling a party of tourists about a big deer-hunt he had a few years before. Warming up with his subject, he pointed out with his whip a steep bluff on the hill-side above them, and thus concluded his narration: "Well, you see, gents, I had just got down in that little canon there, when I seen a deer standing right by that big redwood, and went for him. I didn't see but one deer when I fired, but that deer just gin one leap and come crashing down inter the bush thar as dead as a door nail, and blast my pictur' ef three more didn't come jumpin' over arter him, each one shot so dead that he never kicked. That was jest the strongest shootin' gun you ever seed in yer lives, gentlemen. I never seed its ekal, and I've seen some in my time, I kin tell yer! But the curiousest thing about it was, that the fust deer I fired at was shot right through the side of the head, jest above the eye, and through the off hind foot, jest above the huff. Fact, gentlemen!" "Through the hind hoof and head at the same shot!—how the deuce could that be?" exclaimed one passenger. "Look here, S., don't you think that is drawine it a little strong?—four deer at one shot, and only saw one of them!" said another. "Well, as fur the bullet going through the hind foot and head at the same time, yer see he was jest scratchin' his ear with the huff when I fired. That's easy enuff counted fur; but the hittin' of four on 'em one after ​another, that always did puzzle me a leetle; howsumever, I'll take my affadavy it's a fact, and what is more, there's the hill right in front on yer, gentlemen, and yer can see it fur yerselves! There ain't no gettin' over that, gentlemen!" This logic silenced the doubters, and S. remained master of the situation. The similarity of the experience of S. and Wheeler in some particulars may strike the hypercritical reader: only another proof that history has a tendency toward repeating itself in all ages and countries; nothing more, upon my honor.

      These and many similar anecdotes we exchanged, my hunter friend and I, while Chirimoya amused himself munching the dry grass which grew in scattered tufts among the bushes, and from time to time varied the entertainment a trifle by essaying the feat of kicking a fly off the top of his rump with his hind feet,—a thing which cannot be done successfully. I have studied equine anatomy thoroughly, and have done my best, laboring long and earnestly with a club, to convince that noble brute that the thing is a physical impossibility; but it is all of no use; he will persist in trying it, I suppose, and setting all my counsel and instruction at naught, until he disjoints his back, turns himself inside outwards, or is promoted to a position in the shafts of a sand-cart, where he cannot lift his heels. The perversity of men and Spanish horses is something beyond my comprehension.

      Speaking of hitting flies reminds me of a trifling incident, occurring about the commencement of our late civil war, on the Rio Grande. I saw an old, ​one-eyed Mexican vaquero hitting flies, one by one with a long rawhide whip, as they crawled up the side of a wall, and took occasion to compliment him on his dexterity. His broad sombrero was off in a moment, and with many low bows and protestatory shrugs and gestures he replied, in good Castilian, substantially as follows:

      "Yes, your Excellency, I have made it the study of my life, and have achieved some small measure of success in my efforts, as you do me the infinite honor to remark. I can now hit a fly and knock him off the side of a mule without disturbing the mule, or I can hit the mule and knock him out from under the fly without disturbing the fly. I am quite at your Excellency's service; which will you do me the honor to order me to do?"

      I ordered him to go and take a drink, and he demonstrated the soundness of my judgment and his title to my confidence by going and doing so without further parley. To the' credit of the Spanish Americans I will say that my confidence has seldom been abused by them, or proved to have been misplaced. I wish I could say as much for some of my own countrymen!

      This part of the coast of San Mateo and Santa Cruz is subject to periodical visitations of various kinds of fish, some of which are almost unaccountable and very peculiar indeed. The baracouta, a species of sea-pickerel greatly valued by the Italian and French cooks for soup and chowder, sometimes swarms in the waters close in shore, and is taken by cartloads. At other times the shore is literally ​covered with "horse-mackerel," and the whole population turns out to enjoy the sport of gathering them in. It has never been my good fortune to witness one of these grand fish-battles, but I find one described as follows in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

      "We reached the fishing-grounds about twilight,—here the pen fails to do justice to the scene. It was low tide; the sea here forms a continuous, almost level beach, five or six miles long, and an average width of one hundred and fifty yards at low tide, with a hard, smooth bottom, and not a pebble nor a sea-weed visible the whole distance; probably there is no nicer nor finer drive in the State for the same distance: СКАЧАТЬ