The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast Part 23

Hardly had the argument closed before Mum began to smell and snort, here and there, intent upon a confused trail. His motion became soon more steady, and he started off at a pace that made the hunters run to keep in sight. Afraid that at this rate Frank would give out, and that he himself would be too much out of breath to aim surely, or to creep cautiously upon the deer, Robert called out, "Steady, Mum!" The well-trained brute instantly slackened his speed, and keeping only about a rod ahead, went forward at a moderate walk. In this way they followed for a full quarter of a mile, when Robert observed him take his nose from the ground, and walk with noiseless step, keeping his eyes keenly directed forwards. He "steadied" him again by a half whispered command, and kept close at his heels. Soon he saw a pair of antlers peering above a distant thicket, and the brown side of a deer between the branches. Softly ordering Mum to "come in," and noticing that what little wind there was blew so as not to carry their scent to the deer, he said to Frank, "Buddy, if you will remain by this large poplar, I will creep behind yonder thicket, and see if I cannot get a shot. Will you be afraid?"

"No," he replied, "if you do not go too far away."

"I will not go out of hearing," Robert said, "and if you need anything, whistle for me, but do not call. Hide yourself behind this tree, and when you hear me shoot, come as soon as you please."

It was easy to cover his advance behind the dense foliage of a viny bower, until he was quite near. He paused to listen; the rustle of leaves and the sound of stamping feet were distinctly heard. A short but cautious movement gave him a commanding view of the ground. There were three deer feeding within easy reach of his shot. He sprung both barrels, and tried to be deliberate, but in spite of all resolution his heart jumped into his mouth, and his hand shook violently; he had what hunters call "the buck-ague." Steadying his piece against a stout branch, he aimed at the shoulders of the largest, and fired. It fell, with a bound forward. The other deer, instead of darting away, as he expected, turned in apparent surprise to look at the unusual vision of smoke and fire, accompanied by such a noise, when he took deliberate aim with a now steady hand, and fired at the head of the next largest, as it was in the act of springing away.

"Come, Frank! come!" he shouted.

Frank, however, had started at the first report, and was now running at the top of his speed. Robert rushed forward to dye his hand for the first time in the blood of so n.o.ble a victim; yet it made him almost shudder to hear the knife grate through the delicate flesh, and to see the rich blood gurgling upon the ground. Had it not been that such butchery was necessary to subsistence, he would have resolved at that moment to repeat it no more.

But what was next to be done? Here were two large deer lying upon the earth. Should he skin and cleanse them there, and attempt to carry home the divided quarters? or should he carry home one deer and return for the other? He decided upon the last. Before proceeding homewards, however, he blazed a number of trees, to show afar off the place of his game; then selecting a tree, as far as he could distinguish in his way, he went towards it, chopping each bush and sapling with his hatchet; and making a broad blaze upon this tree, he selected another in the same line, and proceeded thus until he reached the tent. He had learnt by one-half day's practice to thread the trackless forest with a steadiness of course and a confidence of spirit that were surprising to himself.

CHAPTER XXVI

CRUTCHES IN DEMAND--CURING VENISON--PEMMICAN--SCALDING OFF A PORKER'S HAIR WITH LEAVES AND WATER--TURKEY TROUGH--SOLITARY WATCHING--FORCE OF IMAGINATION--FEARFUL RENCOUNTER--DIFFERENT MODES OF REPELLING WILD BEASTS

Harold's ankle continued so painful whenever he attempted to move, that Sam advised him, the morning after the accident, to construct for himself a pair of crutches. "Make 'em strong and good, Mas Harol," said he, with a broad grin of satisfaction. "I hope by time you trow 'em away, I'll pick 'em up." This work occupied the two invalids, while Robert and Frank were engaged in their successful deer hunt.

When the venison was brought home, Harold a.s.sisted in various ways in preparing it for use; and also promised that if he was provided with the necessary means, he would see that all which was thereafter brought in should be properly cured. His favourite mode was by the process called _jerking_. The plan was this: A wig-wam was made, about five feet in diameter at the base, and five feet high, leaving a hole at the top about two feet wide. A place for fire was scooped in the middle; and the pieces of venison were hung in the smoke that poured through the open top. Pieces an inch thick, when exposed at the same time to smoke and sunshine were perfectly cured in the course of a day. The hams required, of course, a longer time, and were all the better for a little salt. The _salting tub_ was made of a fresh deer's skin, fleshy side up, supported by stakes so as to sag in the middle. A subst.i.tute for a _pickle barrel_ was also devised in the course of time; this consisted of a deer's skin, stripped off whole, and rendered water-tight by stopping the holes; in this the meat was put, covered with a strong brine, and drawn up into a tree. When the visits of the flesh-fly were apprehended, the mouth of the sack was secured by a string. But the most convenient form in which the meat was cured was that known as _pemmican_. To prepare this the meat was jerked until perfectly dry, then pounded fine, and mixed with half its own weight of melted grease; after which it was packed away in skin bags, having the hair outwards.

The pemmican could be eaten, like bologna sausage, either cooked or raw, and kept perfectly sweet as long as it was needed.

While describing these several modes of preparing and preserving their meat, it may not be amiss to mention also a method adopted by Harold for scalding off an opossum's hair without any of the usual appliances for heating the water. The opossum had been killed before it was known that the utensils for boiling were all in use and could not be spared.

Robert was perplexed, for he knew that the hair "sets" as soon as the carca.s.s is cold, and refuses to be drawn. But Harold replied with a smile,

"I have seen hogs scalded by being put into a deep puddle of water heated with red hot stones. All the water needed for so small an object as the opossum may be heated in a deer skin, hung like our salting tub over the fire. But I will show you a still easier plan."

He gathered a pile of dry leaves, with which he covered the body, and then poured on water until the pile was quite wet; after which he piled on a much larger quant.i.ty of dry leaves, which he set on fire. When the ma.s.s had burnt down, the hair of the opossum was found so thoroughly _steamed_ by the surrounding heat, that it yielded as easily as if it had pa.s.sed through the most approved process of the pork cleaning art.

Towards sunset Robert went to the turkey baits; the birds had returned to the place they had visited before, and eaten all the parched corn thrown there the second time. He renewed the bait, with this difference (made on Harold's suggestion)--that whereas he had formerly scattered the corn broad-cast, he now strewed it in a sort of trough, or shallow trench, made in the ground. This trench was made on a line proceeding straight from a place of concealment, selected within good shooting distance. Turkeys are greedy feeders; and when they find a place baited as that was, they gather on each side of the trench, with their heads close together, trying each to obtain his share of the prize; and a person having a gun loaded with duck or squirrel shot, has been known to kill six or eight at a time, by firing among their interlocking heads.

An additional visit enabled Robert to determine that the hour of their coming was early in the morning; and this being the only other circ.u.mstance wanting to fix the time of his own coming to meet them, he used that opportunity to arrange to his fancy the place of his concealment. The trench was on a line with two short hedges of bamboo brier, diverging from each other in the shape of the letter V, having a place of egress at the angle. He closed the mouth of the V by planting a blind of evergreens, high as his head, and very close at the bottom; and as it was probable that he should be compelled to remain some hours in concealment, he made a seat, and opened through the blind a hole for observation.

On the following morning he was up and moving at the peep of day. Mary prepared him a cup of coffee, and by the time that there was light sufficient to follow the blazed track he was on the way. His course lay eastward, and through the opening branches glowed that beautiful star which he had often admired, Venus, the gem of the morning, "flaming upon the forehead of the dawn."

Frank begged hard to be allowed to go too, his confidence in Robert's woodsmanship having been greatly increased by the recent success; but Harold decided against him. He said that in turkey shooting the fewer persons there were present the better; that Robert himself must keep still as a mouse, and that well trained as Mum was, it would be better even for him to be left behind. Robert therefore departed alone, putting into his pocket a small volume of Shakespeare, to aid in whiling away the slow hours of his solitary watch.

On arriving at the spot his first act was to see that the bait was yet untouched. He took his seat, and continued for a long time peeping through the port hole, and listening with an attention so acute that he could hear the rush of his own blood along the throbbing arteries. But as the minutes pa.s.sed, and no change occurred, not even the chirp of a bird or the bark of a squirrel enlivening the grim solitude, his excitement gradually gave way to weariness. He leaned his gun against the wall of vines, and drew out his book. It was the first volume, containing that magnificent drama, "The Tempest." He read rapidly the familiar scenes describing Ariel, the light, invisible spirit, and Caliban, the hideous son of the old hag, and Prospero, with his beautiful daughter, and the dripping refugees from the sea, and became so deeply absorbed as perfectly to forget where he was, until a slight rustling behind a briery thicket near the bait aroused his attention.

Whatever the animal might have been, its step was very stealthy, and evidently approaching. Laying down the book, and grasping his gun, he peeped cautiously around; nothing was visible. Soon he heard a rattling upon the ground of falling fragments, as if from some animal climbing a tree, and a grating sound like that of bark which is grasped and crushed.

"I wonder what that can be?" he mentally soliloquized. "Perhaps a large fox-squirrel climbing after acorns--but no, there is too much bark falling for that. It must be a squirrel barking a dead limb for worms.

That's it! O, yes, that's it."

But it was no squirrel, and had Robert been more of a woodsman he would not have returned so quietly to his reading. Indeed, he had become more deeply interested in his book than in his business, and was glad of any excuse that allowed him to return to Prospero and the shipwrecked crew.

He read a few pages more, and stopping to connect in his mind the disjointed parts of the story, his eye rested upon what appeared to be the bushy tail of a very large squirrel, lying upon a limb of the tree that overhung the bait.

"I knew it was a squirrel," said he to himself; "but he is a bouncer!

How long his tail is! and how it moves from side to side like a cat's, when it sees a bird or a mouse that it is trying to catch. I wish I could see his body, but it is hidden by that bunch of leaves."

His imagination was so powerfully impressed with the graphic scenery of "The Tempest," that he could scarcely think of anything else. The idea in his mind at that moment was the ludicrous scene in which the drunken Stephano comes upon the queer bundle, made up of Caliban and Trinculo, lying head to head under the same frock, and appearing to his unsteady eyes like a monster with two pairs of legs at each end. As Robert looked into the tree, he almost laughed to catch himself fancying that he saw Caliban's head lying on the same limb on which lay the squirrel's tail, and staring at him with its two great eyes. Indeed he did see something. There was a veritable head resting there, and two great eyeb.a.l.l.s were glaring upon him, and nothing but the irresistible influence of the scenes he had read deceived him for a moment with the idea that it was Caliban's.

A second and steady look would probably have revealed the truth; but for this he had not time. The welcome "twit! twit!" of the expected game caused him to look through his port hole, and a large turkey c.o.c.k, accompanied by four hens, ran directly to the trench, and began to eat as fast as they could pick up the grains. Robert cautiously slipped his gun through the port hole, and took deliberate aim, confident that he could kill the five at one shot. But hesitating a moment whether he should commit such wholesale destruction, when they were already so well supplied with fresh meat, his gun made a slight noise against the leaves, which attracted the attention of the turkeys, and caused the hens to dart away. The gobbler, being the leader and protector of the party, stood his ground courageously, stretching his long neck full four feet high, looking in every direction, and then coming cautiously towards the blind to reconnoitre.

Robert had gained experience from his still hunting; and in this conjuncture stood perfectly motionless, keeping his gun as immovable as the stiff branch of a dry tree. The bird was deceived. It returned quietly to the trench, and commenced feeding. Robert waited in the hope that it would be joined by another; but no other coming, he fired while it was picking up the last few grains, and killed it. The moment of pulling the trigger, he heard a rustle of leaves in the tree above the turkey, and the moment after the report of his gun a heavy fall upon the ground. As he rushed from his concealment to seize the fallen game, he was horrified to see an enormous beast of the cat kind, crushing the head of the bird in its mouth, while its paw pinioned the fluttering wings. It was a panther. It had crawled into the tree while Robert was reading. It was _its_ tail he had mistaken for a squirrel's, and _its_ head he had fancied was Caliban's. For half an hour it had been glaring upon him with its big eyeb.a.l.l.s, waiting until he should pa.s.s near enough to be pounced upon.

The coming of the turkeys had distracted its attention; and being hungry, it had ceased to watch for its human victim, and resolved upon that which was surer. When Robert emerged from his concealment it turned upon him, dropped the mangled head from its b.l.o.o.d.y mouth, reversed the hair on both back and tail, showed its enormous fangs, and growled. Had he retreated from the field he might have escaped the terrible conflict that awaited him, for the panther, left to the peaceable possession of its prize, would probably have s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and ran away. But his horror at the sight was so great that for a moment he was paralysed. He convulsively clutched his gun, and was on the point of firing almost without aim, when another fierce growl from the panther, that appeared to be gathering itself for a leap, brought him to his senses. He took deliberate aim between its eyes, and fired.

It was a desperate chance, for the gun was loaded only with duck shot.

The howl of rage and pain with which the panther bounded upon him, and the grinning horrible teeth that it showed, made his blood run cold. He clubbed his gun, prepared to aim a heavy blow upon its forehead, but, to his surprise, instead of leaping upon him, it sprang upon the thicket of briers, about three feet distant, and began furiously to tear on every side at perfect random.

He needed no better chance to escape from so dangerous a neighbourhood; and, in the moment of leaving, saw that both eyes of the animal had been shot away, and that the b.l.o.o.d.y humour was streaming down its face. He hurried on for a few steps, but fearing that the frantic beast might pursue him, he slipped behind a tree, and pouring hastily into his gun a charge of powder, which he rammed down as he ran, put upon that a heavy load of deer shot, and then made his way homewards.

Ere he had run one-half the distance, however, his fears began to subside. The panther, if not mortally wounded, was stone-blind; why should he not muster courage enough to complete the work, and thus perform a feat of which he might be proud as long as he lived? In the midst of this cogitation, he heard before him the tramp of footsteps, and saw the glimmering of an animal that bounded towards him with rapid pace. Could this be the panther which had pursued him, and intercepted his flight! He levelled his piece in readiness for battle, and was preparing to pull trigger at the first fair sight, when he saw that, instead of a panther, it was Mum--good faithful Mum, broken loose from his confinement at home, and come in a moment of need to help his master. What a relief! Robert called him, patted him, hugged him, and then said, "Stop, Mum! I'll give you something to do directly. Just wait a minute, boy, till I load this other barrel; and with you to help me, I shall not be afraid of any panther, whether his eyes are in or out."

Mum had sagacity enough to know that his master was greatly excited, and he showed his own sympathy by whining, frisking about, and wagging his short tail. Robert loaded with dispatch, hurried back, keeping Mum directly before him, and holding his piece ready for instant use; but the panther had disappeared.

On reaching the field of battle, Mum's first act was to spring upon the prostrate bird, but finding it dead he let it lie; then perceiving the odour of the panther's track, his hair bristled, he followed the trail for a few steps, and returned, looking wistfully into his master's face.

He evidently understood the dangerous character of the beast that had been there, and was reluctant to follow. Robert, however, put him upon the trail, and encouraged him to proceed. Mum undertook the business very warily. He went first to the brier on which the panther had last been seen; then in a zigzag course, that seemed to be interrupted by every bush against which the blinded beast had struck; finally he bristled up again, and gave signs of extreme caution. A few steps brought them to a fallen log, between two large branches of which Robert saw his formidable enemy, crouched and panting. He softly called in his dog. The panther p.r.i.c.ked up its ears, and raised its head, as if trying to pierce through the impenetrable gloom. Robert came noiselessly nearer and nearer, until within ten paces, then deliberately taking aim, he discharged the whole load of bullets between the creature's eyes. It leaped convulsively forward, and died almost without a struggle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Deliberately taking aim, he discharged the whole load of bullets between the creature's eyes]

Soon as it was indubitably dead, Robert went forward to examine it. He turned it over, felt its bony legs and compact body; looked at the terrible fangs from which he had made so narrow an escape, and, having satisfied his curiosity, attempted to take it upon his shoulder; but this was far beyond his strength--the panther was heavy as a large deer.

He marked carefully the spot where it lay, and returning to the tree for his book and bird, hurried home, to tell the others of his perilous adventure.

Hardly had he come within sight, before Frank's quick eyes discerned him. "What!" said he, with a playful taunt, "only one turkey! I thought you would have had a house full, you staid so long and fired so often. Cousin Harold hardly knew what to make of it; he said he supposed you must have _wounded_ a turkey; so I ran and let Mum loose to help you."

"I am glad you did," replied Robert, drawing a long breath, "for never in my life was I more in need of help."

"And you didn't get the other after all?"

"O, yes, all I aimed at. But something came near getting me, too.

Where are Cousin Harold and sister?"

"In the tent."

Harold and Mary smiled with pleasure to see the fine bird on his shoulder, but could not understand the seriousness of countenance with which he approached. He related the particulars of his adventure, to which they listened with breathless attention. Mary turned very pale, Harold's eyes flashed fire, and Sam's white teeth shone in repeated laughs of admiration.

"How I wish I could have been with you," said Harold, looking mournfully at his lame foot.

"I wish you had been."

"That was a terrible moment, when you had fired your last barrel, and the panther was rushing upon you. You must have given up all for lost."

"No," replied Robert, "I felt myself tremendously excited, but had no idea of giving up."