A La California. Albert S. Evans
literally boiled down in this case, and our hero of "the three bars," as he was derisively termed, went to his bed that night in a frame of mind easier to be imagined than described. Next morning a small Spanish boy—who had been posted in advance by the party—rode out on a mustang to the scene of our hero's misadventure, brought back his gun, which was found lying on the ground just where he had left it, and on being closely questioned as to the "sign" he had seen, swore by all the saints in the calendar that there was nothing there save a few fresh hoe tracks. This last straw broke the camel's back, and our Nimrod packed his traps and started for San Francisco by the morning stage, cursing in the bitterness of his heart the whole human race, and devoutly praying that the bears which the hunters affected to disbelieve in the very existence of might catch and devour them all. It is but just to add that the bears were there, and the hunters knew it all the time. They only wanted their little joke. Everything had occurred just as he had stated it, and in the frenzy of his terror he had done the wisest thing imaginable, and taken in fact the only feasible and proper course to get himself well out of a bad scrape.
My hunter friend was just a little soured in spirit by a misadventure of his own that morning. In company with a young man from the city, who came well recommended as a good shot and energetic hunter, he had started out at daybreak into the mountains in search of deer. They were going up a narrow trail along the bottom of a thick-wooded canon, when a deer, startled by their footsteps, sprang up within ten feet of them and darted away with tremendous bounds through the bushes. The young man, startled out of his seven senses by the sudden appearance of the deer, had been seized with the "buck fever," and discharging his rifle at random without the slightest idea what he was about, came within an ace of blowing his companion's head off. For this he had received a blessing, and an intimation that thenceforth their paths were separated, and the more widely the better.
This "buck fever" is one of the most violent diseases which ever attacked the human system. The story of the Southern planter who placed his negro servant in ambush, and then, ordering him to fire the moment he got a fair sight at the deer, drove a fine buck directly down the ravine past him, is familiar, I presume, to most of my readers. As the buck dashed past him the negro rose to his feet, when the frightened animal made a tremendous bound, clearing a clump of bushes and a fallen tree-top, and was out of sight in an instant. "Why in thunder didn't you fire, Sam, as I told you?" "Fire, massa? Gully mighty, massa, I didn't tink 'twas any use! He jump so almighty high, I was done gone sure he'd break his back falling, massa!" was the trembling darkey's quick-witted reply.
I once knew a man out in Illinois named Wheeler. He had been engaged in farming on Fox River for years and never fired a gun. But one winter when a light snow covered the ground, he heard the boys talking so much about the fun they were having at deer-hunting of that his ambition became excited, and he determined to borrow a gun and start out himself. He did so. That night he came back with a magnificent buck, shot square in the middle of the forehead. Wheeler said little about his achievement, but got the credit of being a crack shot, which he enjoyed for years. But 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