Rancho Del Muerto and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors

Moeran’s mission had been accomplished much easier than was expected, and he certainly had discovered a most promising locality for the trip with his friends. After a day spent fishing, he departed homeward, leaving his canoe and camp outfit in charge of the guide, whom he also bound by most solemn pledge neither to betray the secret of the beaver meadow, nor to molest the moose himself, before Moeran and his friends returned in time for the first lawful day.

The last day of the close season saw the party and the guide snugly encamped at a point half-way down the lake. His three friends had unanimously agreed that Moeran should have the honor of visiting the beaver meadow first, and alone if he desired. He was the surest shot and by far the best hand at this sort of business, and he had discovered the moose, while all hands knew how keen he was to secure a head to his own rifle. So at earliest dawn Moeran put lunch and rifle into his shapely Peterboro and sped noiselessly away through the ghostly vapors curtaining the sleeping lake, and they saw him no more for many hours. The guide had questioned the others about their comrade’s shooting (of his ability at the paddle he had somewhat sorrowful remembrance), and then, strange to say, had advised Moeran to go alone.

“So much more glory for you,” he said, “and I’ll look after these other gentlemen and give them a day’s fishing.” But his manner was shifty, and Moeran mistrusted him.

In due time he reached the little channel leading to the beaver meadow, and, as the sun lifted clear of the distant hills, he began working his way to the pond. He hardly expected to find the moose there then, but he had made up his mind to steal into the high grass and hide and watch all day, if necessary, and, at all events, study the thing out thoroughly. As the sun rose higher a brisk breeze sprang up, but as it came from the woods toward his station he did not mind, although it would have been fatal to his chance, probably, had it come from any other point of the compass. Presently his nose detected a strong, sickening odor of carrion, which, in time, as the breeze gained force, became almost overpowering, and he started to investigate. Paddling straight up-wind he came at last to a small pool, and the trouble was explained. The half-decomposed body of a full-grown cow moose lay in the pool and Moeran muttered savagely his opinion of all such butchery when he saw that not even the feet had been taken for trophies. Then he poled his canoe to the edge of the meadow and scouted carefully entirely round the open, seeking for any possible sign of the remainder of the quartet. To his utter disgust he found the remains of another moose, one of the younger animals, lying just within the borders of the cover, and, as in the other case, the butcher had not troubled himself to take away any portion of his victim. Moeran understood, of course, that the guide had played him false, and if that worthy had been present he might have seriously regretted his wrong-doing, for he it was who had guided a learned and honorable (?) American judge to the sanctuary of the moose a month previously, and, for a consideration of twenty-five dollars, enabled his patron to gratify his taste for the shambles.

Moeran’s careful search discovered no fresh sign, and he made up his mind that the two survivors, the old bull and the yearling, had fled the scene and had probably sought another expanse of beaver meadow and ponds the guide had mentioned as being about ten miles from Trout Lake. Moeran knew that some sort of a trail led thither, and he resolved to find it and follow it to the end and endeavor to locate the moose.

Of the ensuing long, hard day’s work it will be unnecessary to speak in detail.

At nine o’clock that night his three friends sat near their roaring camp-fire on the lake shore, wondering at his protracted absence. The guide had turned in an hour previous, but the three were anxious, so they sat and smoked, and discussed the question, piling great drift-logs on their fire till it roared and cracked in fierce exultation and leaped high in air to guide the wanderer home. Its long, crimson reflection stretched like a pathway of flame far over the black waters of the lake, and the three sat and waited, now glancing along this glowing path, anon conversing in subdued tones. The lake was as still and dark as a lake of pitch, and some way the three felt ill at ease, as though some evil impended. At last the veteran of the trio broke a longer silence than usual:

“Boys, I don’t like this. It’s ten o’clock and he should have been back long ago. I hope to Heaven – ”

A touch on his arm from the man at his right caused him to glance quickly lakeward.

Forty feet from them, drifting noiselessly into the firelight, was the Peterboro, with Moeran kneeling as usual and sending the light craft forward in some mysterious manner which required no perceptible movement of the arms nor lifting of the paddle. It was a fine exhibition of his skill to thus approach unheard three anxious, listening men on such a night, for he had heard their voices good two miles away. His appearance was so sudden, so ghostlike, that for a few seconds the party stared in mute surprise at the forms of man and craft standing out in sharp relief against the blackness of the night; then a whoop of delight welcomed him.

He came ashore, swiftly picked up the canoe and turned it bottom upward on the sand for the night, carried his rifle into camp, then approached the fire and looked sharply round.

“The guide’s asleep.”

“Oh, he is; – him!” Then he flung himself down on the sand. Something in his tone and manner warned his friends not to talk, and they eyed him curiously. His face was white as death and drawn with an expression of utter exhaustion, and marked with grimy lines, showing where rivulets of sweat had trickled downward. As they looked, his eyes closed; he was going to sleep as he lay.

Quietly the veteran busied himself getting food ready, and presently roused the slumberer.

“Here, old chap, have a nip and eat a bite. Why, you’re dead beat. Where on earth have you been?”

A strangely hollow voice answered:

“To the back lakes.”

His listeners whistled a combined long-drawn “whew” of amazement, for right well they knew the leagues of toilsome travel this statement implied.

“See anything?”

“Wounded the old bull badly, and trailed him from the lakes to within five miles of here. That cur sleeping yonder sold us; but you hear me!” he exclaimed with sudden fierce energy, “I’ll get that moose if I have to stay in the woods forever!”

The three looked at him in admiring silence, for they guessed that, in spite of his terrible day’s work, he intended starting again at daylight. In a few moments he finished his meal and staggered to the tent, and fell asleep as soon as he touched his blanket.

When the party turned out next morning the canoe was gone, though the sun was not yet clear, of the hills. After breakfast they started in quest of grouse, working through the woods in the direction of the beaver meadows, and finding plenty of birds. About ten o’clock they heard the distant report of a rifle, followed in a few minutes by a second, and the veteran exclaimed, “That’s him, for an even hundred, and he’s got his moose, or something strange has happened.”

At noon they returned to camp laden with grouse. No sign of the canoe as yet, so they had dinner, and lounged about and fished during the afternoon, casting many expectant glances down the lake for the laggard canoe. Night fell, with still no sound or sign of the wanderer, and again the camp-fire roared and flamed and sent its glowing reflection streaming far over the black waste of water. And again the three sat waiting. At ten o’clock the veteran rose and said, “Keep a sharp lookout, boys, and don’t let him fool you again, and I’ll get up a royal feed. He’ll have moose-meat in the canoe this time, for he said he’d get that moose if he had to stay in the woods forever. He’ll be dead beat, sure, for he’s probably dragged the head out with him.” So they waited, piling the fire high, and staring out over the lake for the first glimpse of the canoe. Eleven o’clock and midnight came and went, and still no sign. Then they piled the fire high for the last time and sought the tent. At the door the veteran halted, and laying a hand on the shoulder of his chum, drew him aside.

“Why, whatever’s the matter with you?”

The old man’s face wore a piteous expression, and his voice trembled as he whispered:

“Hush! Don’t let him hear you – but there’s something wrong. Something horrible has happened – I feel it in my heart.”

“Nonsense, man! You’re sleepy and nervous. He’s all right. Why, he’s just cut himself a moose steak, and had a feed and laid down – ”

The sentence was never completed. A sound that caused both men to start convulsively tore through the black stillness of the night. A horrible, gurgling, demoniacal laugh came over the lake, and died away in fading echoes among the hills. “Woll-oll-all-ollow-wall-all-ollow!” as though some hideous fiend was laughing with his lips touching the water. They knew what it was, for the loon’s weird cry was perfectly familiar to them, and they laughed too, but there was no mirth in their voices. Then one sought the tent, but the veteran paced up and down upon the cold beach, halting sometimes to replenish the fire or to stare out over the water, until a pale light spread through the eastern sky. Then he too turned in for a couple of hours of troubled, unrefreshing slumber.

The bright sunshine of an Indian summer’s day brought a reaction and their spirits rose wonderfully; but still the canoe tarried, and as the hours wore away, the veteran grew moody again and the midday meal was a melancholy affair. Early in the afternoon he exclaimed:

“Boys, I tell you what it is: I can stand this no longer – something’s wrong, and we’re going to paddle those two skiffs down to the beaver meadow and find out what we can do, and we’re going to start right now. God forgive us if we have been idling here while we should have been yonder!”

Two in a boat they went, and the paddles never halted until the channel to the beaver meadow was gained. Dividing forces, they circled in opposite directions round the open, but only the taint of the long-dead moose marked the spot. Then they fired three rifles in rapid succession and listened anxiously, but only the rolling, bursting echoes of the woods answered them.

“Guide, where would he probably have gone?”

“Wa’al, he told you he’d run the old bull this way from the back lakes – thar’s another leetle mash a mile north of us; it’s an awful mud-hole, and the bull might possibly hev lit out fur thar. Enyhow, we’d best hunt the closest spots first.”

The picture of that marsh will haunt the memories of those three men until their deaths. A few acres of muskeg, with broad reaches of sullen, black, slimy water, its borders bottomless mud, covered with a loathsome green scum, and a few pale-green, sickly-looking larches dotting the open – the whole forming a repulsive blemish, like an ulcer, on the face of the earth. All round rose a silent wall of noble evergreens, rising in massive tiers upon the hills, with here and there a flame of gorgeous color where the frost had touched perishable foliage. Overhead a hazy dome of dreamy blue, with the sun smiling down through the gauzy curtains of the Indian summer. Swinging in easy circles, high in air, were two ravens, challenging each other in hollow tones, their orbits crossing and recrossing as they narrowed in slow-descending spirals. “Look, look at him!”

One bird had stooped like a falling plummet, and now hung about fifty yards above the farther bounds of the muskeg, beating the air with heavy, sable pinions and croaking loudly to his mate above. Closing her wings, she stooped with a whizzing rush to his level, and there the two hung flapping side by side, their broad wings sometimes striking sharply against each other, their hoarse, guttural notes sounding at intervals. A nameless horror seized the men as they looked. Their hunter’s instinct told them that death lay below those flapping birds, and with one impulse they hurried round on the firmer ground to the ill-omened spot.

The veteran, white-faced but active as a lad, tore his way through the bordering cover first, halted and stared for an instant, then dropped his rifle in the mud, threw up his hands and exclaimed in an agonized voice:

“Oh, my God, my God!”

One by one they crashed through the brush and joined him, and stood staring. No need for questions. Ten square yards of deep-trodden, reeking mud and crushed grass, a trampled cap, and here and there a rag of brown duck; a silver-mounted flask shining in a little pool of bloody water; a stockless rifle-barrel, bent and soiled, sticking upright; beyond all a huge, hairy body, and below it a suggestion of another body and a blood-stained face, that even through its terrible disfigurement seemed to scowl with grim determination. Throwing off their coats, they dragged the dead moose aside and strove to raise Moeran’s body, but in vain. Something held it; the right leg was broken and they found the foot fast fixed in a forked root the treacherous slime had concealed. In the right hand was firmly clutched the haft of his hunting knife, and in the moose’s throat was the broken blade. The veteran almost smiled through his tears as they worked to loosen the prisoned foot, and muttered, “Caught like a bear in a trap; he’d have held his own with a fair chance.” Carrying the poor, stamped, crushed body to the shade, they laid it upon the moss and returned to read the story of the fearful battle. To their hunter’s eyes it read as plainly as printed page. The great bull, sore from his previous wound, had sought the swamp. Moeran had trailed him to the edge and knocked him down the first shot, and after reloading had run forward to bleed his prize. Just as he got within reach the bull had struggled up and charged, and Moeran had shot him through the second time. Then he had apparently dodged about in the sticky mud and struck the bull terrific blows with the clubbed rifle, breaking the stock and bending the barrel, and getting struck himself repeatedly by the terrible forefeet of the enraged brute. To and fro, with ragged clothes and torn flesh, he had dodged, the deadly muskeg behind and on either side, the furious bull holding the only path to the saving woods. At last he had entrapped his foot in the forked root, and the bull had rushed in and beaten him down, and as he fell he struck with his knife ere the tremendous weight crushed out his life. The veteran picked up the rifle-barrel, swept it through a pool and examined the action, and found a shell jammed fast.

In despairing voice he said, “Oh, boys, boys, if that shell had but come into place our friend had won the day, but he died like the noble fellow he was!”

With rifles and coats they made a stretcher and carried him sadly out to the lake.

“He would get that moose, or stay in the woods forever!”

THE MYSTERY OF A CHRISTMAS HUNT, By Talbot Torrance

“Clug!” The wad went home in the last shell, and as I removed it from the loader and finished the fill of my belt I heaved a sigh of profound relief at the completion of a troublesome job.

I hate making cartridges. Perhaps I am a novice, and have not a good kit, and am lazy, and clumsy, and impatient, and – But go on and account for it yourself at greater length, if you will, my friends; only accept my solemn statement that I detest the operation, which, I am convinced, ought to be confined to able-bodied colored men with perseverance and pachydermatous knuckles.

An ordinary man is always in fluster and fever before he completes loading up for a day’s gunning. His patent plugger becomes inexplicably and painfully fractious; his percussions are misfits; his No. 10 wads prove to be No. 12s; his shot sack is sure to spill; his canister is certain to sustain a dump into the water pail, and, when he begins to reflect on all the unmentionable lapsi linguæ of which his numerous vexations are the immediately exciting, though possibly not the responsible, cause, he is apt to conclude that, say what you may in favor of the breechloader, there are a certain few points which commend the old-time muzzle-loader, especially when it comes around to charging a shell.

At all events, that is the kind of man I now am; and if the reader is not prepared to absolutely indorse me all through these crotchety cogitations, may I not hope he will at least bear with me patiently and give me time to outgrow it, if possible? But, as I was saying, I have charged up and am ready to sally forth and join the hunting party of the Blankville Gun Club, who had organized a match for Christmas Eve, a bright, nippy day of “an open winter” – as experienced in Northeastern Ontario, at any rate. I don my game bag, strap on my belt, pick up my newly-bought hammerless and prepare to leave the house. My cocker Charlie, long since cognizant of what my preparations meant, is at heel.

There is a wild light in his eyes, but, self-contained animal that he is, not a yelp, whine or even tail wag is manifested to detract from his native dignity and self possession. “Native” dignity? Aye! My dog boasts it naturally; and yet, at the same time, I fancy the switch and I have had something to do in developing it and teaching the pup its apparently unconscious display.

“You’re no fool dog, are you, Charlie? You’re no funny, festive, frolicsome dog, who cannot hold himself in when a run is on the programme – eh, boy?”

The silky-coated canine knows as well as I do that he is in for an afternoon a-wood. He has the inclination to leap and roll and essay to jump out of his hide. Yet the only answer he dare give to the inquiry is an appealing glance from his hazel orbs up at his master’s immovable face. Yes, my dog Charlie is sober and sensible, and I am proud of these characteristics and their usefulness to me before the gun.

“Good-bye, little woman!” I sing out cheerily to my wife as I pass down the hall. She comes to the door to see me off. Sometimes, perhaps, a man will find his adieu on an occasion of this kind responded to uncordially, not to say frigidly, or perhaps not at all. But he must not grieve deeply over it or let it act as an excitative of his mean moroseness or angry passion. Think the thing all over. You are to be far away from home. Why should not the thought of the vacant chair – next to that of the demonstrative and exacting baby at meal time – rise up and sadden your wife? Can you wonder at her distant bearing as she foresees how she will sigh “for the touch of a vanished hand” – on the coal scuttle and water pail? Of course, she will “miss your welcome footsteps” – carrying in kindlings, and the “dear, familiar voice” – calling up the chickens. And so you cannot in reason expect her invariably to answer your kindly adios in a gladsome, gleesome, wholly satisfied sort of way. But never you go away without the goodbye on your part – the honest, manly, loving-toned good-bye that will ring in her ears in your absence and cause her to fancy that perhaps you are not such a selfish old bear after all.

With some of us men – only a limited few, of course, and we are not inclined to think over and enumerate them – it is unhappily the case that

We have cheerful words for the stranger,And smiles for the sometime guest;But oft for our own the bitter tone,Though we love our own the best.

“will miss your welcome footsteps.”

Now, if such men only thoughtHow many go forth in the morning,Who never come back at night!And hearts are broken for harsh words spoken,Which time may never set right,

what a different atmosphere might permeate the domicile on “first days,” to say nothing of the rest of the time!

The real fact of the matter is, men and brothers, we do not accurately appreciate the objections which the domestic partners may entertain against our occasional outings. For my part I verily believe they are largely, if not entirely, prompted by the feeling that

There’s nae luck aboot the hoose,There’s nae luck at a’!There’s nae luck about the hoose,Since oor guid mon’s avva’.

And here we go on thinking it is purely a matter of petty petulance and small selfishness on their part! Come, gentlemen, let us once and for all rightly appreciate the situation and resolve to do better in the future! But let us return to our sheep. My hand is on the door knob, when, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, is heard the tread of tiny feet. It is Ted, my little two year old, coming to say good-bye to papa. I take him up and sing gaily:

Bye, baby bunting,Papa goes a-hunting,To get a little rabbit skinTo wrap the baby bunting in.

How the little man crows and gurgles in glee! Then he grows demonstrative and he wants to take off my cap. He makes a grab at my game bag. As I put him down gently he tries to disarm me and possess himself of the gun.

I say, what an awful bother about the house of the sportsman is the toddling tot of a baby! He is always getting hold of your gun swab for a fish pole or to bang the dog about. Putting holes in your fish basket with a big nail or a table knife is a supreme source of delight to him. He has a mania for planting carpet tacks in your hunting boots. Making smokestacks for mud houses with your brass shells is a passion with him. If he can get hold of your ammunition to make paste of the powder, and pulp of the wads, and a hopeless mixture of the shot, he is simply in his element. Give him possession of your lines and access to your fly book and he enjoys an hour of what is, to him, immense fun, but to you pronounced and positive destruction.

And yet – you wouldn’t be without, that self-same baby if to keep him cost you every shooting iron and foot of tackle you ever owned or hoped to own, and at the same time destroyed the prospect of you ever again having a “day out” on this rare old earth of ours.

It is quite safe to say that the article for which you would exchange that merry, mischievous toddler of yours, who clasps your brown neck with little white, soft arms and presses a sweet baby kiss to your bristled lips, as he sees you off on an outing, has not now an existence – and you do not seem to exactly remember when it had. And you do not care whether he destroys your possessions; they can be replaced.

Yes, indeed! Even you, most inveterate and selfish and calloused votary of the chase – you have a tender spot in your hard old heart for the baby boy. He may not be all that is orderly, obedient, non-combatable, non-destructive, but still we all love him! Not one of us, at all events, but will frankly admit that we respect him – for his father’s sake. Need anything more be said?

And do not we also respect those who depict him in tenderness and affection?

Don’t we think all the more of Scanlon the actor for his inimitable “Peek-a-boo?” and of Charles Mackay for his “Baby Mine?” and of Bret Harte for his “Luck of Roaring Camp?” and of Dickens – wasn’t it Dickens who wrote:

When the lessons and tasks all are ended,And the school for the day is dismissed,And the little ones gather around meTo bid me good-bye and be kissed.Oh, the little, white arms that encircleMy neck in a tender embrace!Oh, the smiles that are halos of HeavenShedding light in a desolate place!

Has it ever occurred to you, my friend, that the baby is the same unchanged, unimproved article since the world began? Men are making smokeless powder, constructing pneumatic bicycle tires, inventing long-distance guns, training horses down to two minutes, getting sprinters to cover 100 yards close to nine seconds – revolutionizing everything, but leaving the baby the old-time brand!

People seem satisfied with the original make, and far from any movement to abolish it as out of date. The sentiment would appear to be pretty universal:

Drear were the world without a child,Where happy infant never smiled.We sooner could the flowerets spare,The tender bud and blossom fair,Or breath of spring time in the air.

I have said “bye-bye” to my tiny Ted half a dozen times and at last am about to escape during his sudden flight to another part of the house, when I am arrested by the eager cry, half in inquiry, half in jubilation, “Baby barlo! Papa, baby barlo! Dee!”

There he stands, holding up my little patent flask as though he had made a wonderful discovery. To humor the child I took the little companion, said “Ta-ta,” and was in the act of slipping it back to my wife, when I decided to keep it. I am not partial to the cup that cheers and also inebriates, and yet I have an appreciation of the pocket pistol that warms, sustains and heartens in a long tramp on a zero afternoon with only a dog for companionship and the chances of bagging anything much reduced to a minimum. I stepped to the sideboard and filled the “barlo” quantum suff.