The Cross Timbers (12 page)

Perhaps it is not correct to say “we” started. George was the
hunter and I, only seven years old, could claim no higher rank than that of the “number-one boy,” trailing along some three paces behind and to the right. George carried the gun, about the same length as himself, over his right shoulder except in the woods where game was momentarily expected to be seen. Then it was held with the stock under his right arm, finger on the trigger, thumb on the hammer, and the central part of the stock held in the left hand. This was “at ready,” for the muzzle was pointed ahead and downward at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

The powder and shot horns hung at his left side, the box of caps and metal charger rattled slightly in one pants pocket, and a hip pocket bulged with a bunch of newspapers. My only duties were to carry the game bag and game, if any; to walk softly; to keep quiet; and to look and listen for quails, squirrels, rabbits, or any other game.

We crossed the orchard and entered the woods to the north of it. Quite a large stretch of woodland here extended north to a road running east and west between the Clark and Taylor farms. In the woods were many dense thickets of underbrush interlaced with greenbrier and sarsaparilla vines. These furnished excellent homes for rabbits and coveys of quail, being almost impenetrable for hawks and nearly as difficult for human enemies with guns to infiltrate. Here we jumped three or four rabbits, but they scurried away so fast that there was no chance for a shot at one.

Doubling back to the edge of our own east field we saw a few doves; when one alighted on a nearby tree George raised the old musket and fired. Down came the bird and we had our first item for the capacious game bag. George was very proud of his marksmanship but I later came to realize that he could hardly
have missed, as the dove was scarcely twenty-five yards away.

We continued our hunt, turning north through a long stretch of fairly open timber. This was not good quail territory, but we again jumped several cottontail rabbits. All of them scampered away, however, and my brother had no intentions of wasting powder and shot on any moving target. His attitude was like that of Dow Taylor, who later remarked to me, “You know Ed, lots of times I can't hit 'em when they're sittin' still.”

At long last, a young cottontail hopped out of a small thicket and paused to look around before deciding which way to run. It was a fatal mistake. The old musket spoke again and George dashed forward to pick up the kicking rabbit, bang its head against a tree, and hand it to me for the game bag. As by this time it was growing late we started for home because in Father's absence we had to do all the evening chores, including milking two cows. When we entered the thick woods north of the orchard George suddenly stopped. I could hear a slight rustling of the dry leaves in a thicket some twenty yards ahead of us but could see nothing. Evidently George, who was three or four steps ahead of me could, however, for he fired and a dozen or more quails flew up from the thicket. George dropped the gun and ran at full speed to retrieve his game.

“How many did you get George?” I called as he dropped to his knees and reached out with both hands to seize the still fluttering quails.

“One, two, three of 'em,” he exclaimed excitedly as he got to his feet and brought the birds back to me to be put in the game bag.

“You sure did run fast to pick 'em up after you shot!”

“That's the way to do,” he replied. “If you don't get there quick, a crippled one may run off. When you shoot any game you've got to run to pick it up. Sometimes you'll just stun a rabbit or squirrel and he'll get up and run off if you don't run and pick him up right
now
!”

This ended our first day's hunt, and we hurried home to show the results to Alice, who was quite impressed by our success. In fact, we were quite proud of our afternoon's work ourselves.

George's haste to retrieve his game reminded me of a yarn told by our brother Tom. He said that a certain man who was very good at throwing rocks complained that he could knock a rabbit over with a rock at twenty or thirty yards very easily, but it always got up and ran away before he could get to it. A friend told him to run faster and seize the rabbit before it recovered from the shock. He was then more successful, but eventually he developed so much speed that one day he threw at a rabbit and ran so fast to pick it up that the rock came along and hit him in the back!!

We found later that bagging three quails, one dove, and one rabbit on our first afternoon of hunting was a case of “beginner's luck.” For the next few months we hunted most of our spare time, but if the household had been forced to rely upon the game we brought in for its meat supply the entire family would have become largely vegetarians. Yet, we never grew discouraged. Any day when it was too wet to pick cotton and we were not busy with other work, we were in the woods and fields with George carrying the gun while I tagged along behind.

Moreover, to us “meat was meat,” as the old-time plainsmen used to say. There were no game laws, no closed season, and no
bag limits, although the last named would not have affected us. George shot quails, squirrels, rabbits, doves, meadow larks, and once a prairie chicken, of which he was very proud.

For some three months I was fairly content to accept the role of game-bag bearer and general assistant for George. If we sighted a squirrel in a tree, however, I could be a real help by going to the opposite side of the tree and making enough noise to induce the squirrel to slip around to the side of the trunk where George stood with the gun ready for a shot. This tendency of a squirrel to keep the tree trunk between himself and the hunter created endless debate as to whether a man going around the tree went around the squirrel!

It was always fun to go hunting with George doing all the shooting, but eventually I developed a yen to test my own marksmanship with the old musket. February 8 was my eighth birthday. Early in the afternoon Alice went over to see Mrs. Clark, George had been sent to Keller on an errand, and Father was grubbing out stumps in the far side of a newly cleared field. It looked to me like a golden opportunity to celebrate my birthday by going hunting.

Very carefully I took the old musket from the rack on the wall, which George had made to hold it. I then stuffed paper in one pocket, the box of caps and charger in another, and with powder and shot horns hanging from a strap over my left shoulder and the old gun over the right one. I sallied forth in search of game.

The old musket was loaded and so was I—with all the impediments to carry, plus a gun considerably longer than myself. I crossed one corner of the field east of the orchard and entered
the dense woods where George had killed the three quails on our first-day's hunt. My fondest hope was to find another covey of quail and mow down at least four or five at one shot.

If I had met with such good fortune it is doubtful if anyone could have lived with me for the next month or so with any degree of comfort. Fortunately, for my family and playmates, Lady Luck was not with me nor were the shades of Diana, Nimrod, Daniel Boone, Buffalo Bill, or any other great hunters of the past. Neither quails, rabbits, nor squirrels came in view. At last a bright-colored bird which we called a “yellowhammer,” doubtless a flicker, alighted on the branch of a tree not over fifty or sixty feet away. In desperation I eased my conscience by saying to myself that the plumage would be excellent to feather my arrows. The gun was too heavy for me to hold up but I rested it in the fork of a bush, sighted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

At the report of the gun the bird fell dead, for it would have been almost impossible to miss at that range. I reloaded the gun very carefully but decided to call it a day and go home. My father said that he saw me heading for the woods with the gun and was a little uneasy but decided not to stop me. Neither George nor Alice seemed to think it unusual for a boy of my age to go hunting with an old musket, but today most mothers and fathers would faint at the sight of their eight-year-old son-and-heir headed for the woods with a man-size gun.

Within a few months we found that the spring in the lock of the old musket was hardly strong enough to explode the big “hat caps,” but frequently snapped. Moreover, the big musket caps were not carried in stock by our local stores, as the
double-barrel muzzle-loading shotgun was the favorite type of gun in the Cross Timbers. George and I, therefore, spent many hours patiently filing down the tube of our old gun until it was small enough to accommodate the standard-size percussion caps made for shotguns.

When spring came a great many migratory plovers stopped over on the prairies for a short time before continuing their flight north. Also, there was a large increase in the number of doves and larks, although some of both these birds, especially larks, remained on the prairie adjoining our section of the Cross Timbers all winter.

The old musket was our only gun until Alice and I took the train for the West in October, 1888. When Father and George joined us some six weeks later they brought with them a double-barrel muzzle-loading shotgun. George explained to me that they had traded a cow for it and that the old musket had again been relegated to the attic bedroom.

George stayed in Greer County only three or four months and went hunting with Henry only two or three times. The only time that I went with them was on a hunt for turkeys on the nearby Indian Reservation. Here were huge flocks of turkeys, which increased very rapidly because of the Indians' taboo against eating them.

We took a wagon and team, crossed the river which was the Reservation boundary, and camped on the eastern branch of Otter Creek, which was called Dry Otter because it seldom had any water in it except immediately after a heavy rain. It was near sunset when we stopped to camp, and looking up stream we were thrilled to see a long file of wild turkeys moving along in the
edge of the timber, which bordered the creek. They were not over two or three hundred yards away and clearly would be going to roost in the trees within an hour at most. Henry, who had been a professional hunter, said that we should make camp and cook supper. By the time we had eaten, it would be dark and the turkeys roosting in the trees could be easily shot.

Unfortunately, soon after dark we heard from up the creek the noise of a great flapping of turkey wings. Henry declared that the big birds had gone to roost but had been distrurbed by some prowling animal, probably either a bobcat or a panther. We waited an hour for them to get settled down again. Then, hoping that they had not traveled too far, we started up the dry, sandy bed of the creek in search of them.

Henry and George were in front with the guns, and I trudged along behind. It was hard walking on the loose sand, and although we walked for what seemed to me several miles the great flock of turkeys had completely disappeared. Henry took one shot at a dark object near the top of a tree, but it proved to be only the empty nest of a squirrel! At long last we despaired of finding the huge flock of turkeys and made our way back to camp. When we finally reached it I could barely put one foot in front of the other. The next morning we returned to Navajoe, as Henry had to get back to work.

Obviously this expedition had nothing to do with hunting in the Cross Timbers, but it gave me an experience to relate with considerable embellishments to my young associates when we returned to our own home a few months later.

Soon after this brief hunting trip George returned to the Cross Timbers to work for our brother Tom. He did not take the
shotgun with him, as he rode down to Vernon, Texas, with Henry and from there by train to Keller. When Father and I followed him by wagon a few months later the old double-barrel gun proved most useful. It was early June and the spring crop of young rabbits, about half-grown, was good. During the entire journey of ten days we had fried young rabbit for supper almost every evening and found it equal to fried chicken.

For a few weeks after reaching our destination we were too busy helping Tom to get any hunting done, but during the weeks we stayed at the Briley house we had little to do except feed and water the pigs and milk the cows. Although it was hot as the hinges of Hereafter, we spent most of the time ranging the woods in search of game. Here we were farther down in the woods and there were some groves of hickory trees, so that the red squirrels were quite numerous.

Later, when we went out to Parker County and camped on Walnut Creek, George and I spent every day that was too damp to pick cotton hunting along the stream. A good many coveys of quail were in the thickets near the banks of the creek or in the edges of the nearby fields. In addition, we found more squirrels here than in our home community, for there were more walnut trees to supply them with winter food.

While we were picking the overflowed field of cotton for Mr. Chandler, Father went up to his house one day on some errand. When he returned to camp he reported with some interest that Chandler had a genuine old Kentucky squirrel rifle and had suggested that he might be willing to trade it for our double-barrel shotgun.