For Our Boys Girls

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 454, 15 March 1890, Page 3

For Our Boys Girls

EDITED BY MRS FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. [COPYRIGHT.] [All Rights Reserved.]

FERGUS AND THE DEER.

Fergus Mackenzie bad heard that the old Highland exaction of a lad before he could be called a man was that he must have killed a red deer, a salmon, an eagle, a seal and a wild swan. Fergus liked to remember that he was descended from Scotch High landers, and he was ambitious to do all that his ancestors had done. He, too, longed to kill a deer, a salmon, an eagle, a seal and a wild swan. But the Mackenzies lived in New York, and not in Scotland , whore red deer roam on the hills, where salmon come up the rivers and seals follow them, where eagles build eyries and wild swans Hy overhead, with white pinions gleaming in the sun. Thinking the matter over in his own mind, however, Fergus decided that, although in o'd times it might have been w worthy act to kill an eagle, nowadays, when there are s‘o few of them left in the world to cleave the upper skies with their mighty wings, it would be like stealing light from the sun and music from the wind to rob the universe of so glorious a bird. Nor did he especially covet the death of a salmon, a seal or a wild swan, but he did long ardently to kill a deer. He was fond of reading books which told about hunting the deer. He knew exactly how to go to work to stalk a stag of ten. Often when he was at his grandmother’s in Lenox he had practised all his skill on the old collie lying asleep on t*e lawn, little dreaming how his small friend in knickerbockers with a pop-gun in his hand was getting to windward of him, creeping stealthily within range and then taking deadly aim while the sheep-dog looked up with a wink of amusement. When Fergus was fourteen his father bought a strip of land in the Adirondack?, bordering on the Upper St. Regis Lake, and set up a camp. By this time Fergus was a slim, tall lad, with clear, ardent darkgrey eyes, a firm mouth and well-cut features. His mother thought him a handsome boy ; his father hoped he was a goodhearted and sensible one. Ho was by turns quick and impetuous, but generally he was a silent fellow, carrying a world of thoughts within him. He had a tent of his own in the camp where he slept rolled in a blanket on a bed of hemlock boughs. Hi? sister s tent was fitted up like a Chinese pagoda, with every conceivable prettiness and luxury, but Fergus, after sleeping on spring beds all his life, longed to rough it a little, else what was the use of camping out? Mr Mackenzie handed his boy over to the charge of Mr Calvin, one of the guides, at the same time giving Fergus a rifle and a beautiful little canoe.’ ‘ Now you shall shoot your deer, my lad,' said he. The camp was pitched upon a high blufl which commanded a view of the furthest reaches of the lake, with its inlets and wooded islets and lovely shores, all dominated bv Mount St. Regis, on whose- slopes wonderful changing lights played from dawn until the shining torch of the sun fell behind it at evening. The lake was never just the saine two hours of the daytogether—in the morning very calm, like a mirror, imaging the shores and islands ; then later Hashing light, a 3 it was rutiled by the wind and the sun shone on the ripples. As everybody' who has been in the Adirondack 3 knows, it is a region of lakes which lie scattered about singly and in groups ; sometimes two or three, linked together by narrow straits, where water-lilies and deerweed grow in profusion ; then again separated by a few hundred feet or yards or rods of forest, through which a path has been cut from shore to shore, and which is called a ‘carry,’ because the guides lift the light canoes and carry them from lake to lake. Calvin and Fergus explored all the country for miles about in this way. They crossed the lake, disembarked ; then Calvin picked up the canoe and swung the yoke over his shoulders, and they walked through the woods to the next lake, which perhaps, they saw all the time glimmering blue through the treos; this gained, Calvin launched the boat anew ; in they jumped and skimmed over the rippling surface to another ‘carry.’ Fergus always gave a cry of surprise and joy at the sight of a new lake, spreading out, as if by miracle, for them to pass over. All about them was the unbroken forest, a wild, dim-lighted chaos almost impassable from the fallen trees and tho unpruned growth. Its darkness and solitude gave new value to the sunny lakes magical with light and movement, as the clouds sailed above and the breezes played In endless chase over the water. You may be sure that when the guide and the boy crossed the lakes or walked through the ‘ carry ’ or sat on the bank eating sandwiches, Calvin did a great deal of talking, and that his favourite theme was the hunting of the deer. Times have changed since Calvin was a boy, when deer were as plenty as chipmunks were nosv. One day, when Calvin was about sixteen, he and his father were returning from a bear hunt down the Chateaugay. They were trying to strike a * trail ’ they knew, arid were picking their way along the rocks and boulders in a deep glen between two high ridges. They were so shut out from the skyjfliey did nob discover that a storm was upon them until the rain began to fall in such Hoods that the little stream at once swelled to a raging torrent, and to get out of its course they had to climb up the steep ledges with all their might. It was only a shower, and presently as if by magic the clouds lifted and the late afternoon sun came out. But unluckily they had lost their way. They were wet to the .skin, and the important point now was to get hold ot some dry wood, make a lire and provide something for supper. As they were scrambling about Calvin suddenly heard his father utter a faint exclamation. He had reached the top'of the ridge and, looking over, found a clearing in the woods, and there, not a hundred feet away, wa3 a herd of fifteen or twenty deer spreading themselves about in a happy - hearted fashion," feeding and drying their coats, which glistened like satin in the sunlight. * They didn’t scent us at all,’ said Calvin. * The rain had freshened the balsam firs; arid they gave out so strong an odour every- ‘ thing was steeped in it. So, though the deer had the wind of us, we could creep up

to a place where they were right under our hand. My father gave me a nod, as much as to say, “ I’ll pick out my game and then you may aim at the whole herd,’’for he knew I liked that sorb of shot. I saw him level his gun, take aim, and I just waited to let him pull his trigger to let go myself Bub though he pulled nothing came of it but a dim snap—nob loud, but just enough to make one of the deer look round and see our heads. Oil they ran ! I tried to lire, bub my gun snapped too. You see the wet got into the barrel.’

‘ And you did not kill a single deer !’ said Fergus. ‘ Oh, what a dreadful pity.’ ‘ Wasn’t it, though ?’ said Calvin, philosophically. ‘ But when the web gets j between the cap and the nipple your busi- i ness is done for that day.’ Fergus could hardly get over the disappointment. He felt that with such a chance Calvin ought to have killed half a dozen deer at least. Bub from Calvin’s sixteenth year to his fiftieth was a long cry, and ho had got over the loss of the deer and of his supper. He had killed his first buck when he was younger than Fergus. He wa? crossing from Saranac to Paul Smith’s, and while on Bear Lake his father thought he smelled fire in the woods, so went to look it up and put it out, if possible, and left Calvin in the boat lying on the bottom rocking it, looking up at the clouds and sky and hearing the wind in the fir trees. All at once there came the laugh of a loon, and Calvin seized his father’s gun, which lay beside him, and peeped over the gun whale, still crouching. At the same instant he was frightened out of his senses as he felt some great object crashing over him. Lo and behold ! It was a deer taking to water with a great leap which had just cleaved tho boat. Calvin, nearer dead than alive, pulled the trigger and hit the doer between its shoulders, who turned, poor creature, as if to reproach its tormentor, exposed its throat, when the boy tired again, inflicting a death wound. It was Calvin’s father who had startled the buck and by now came up, flung a rope and dragged him in. Talk like this moved the heart of Fergus, even if a pang of sympathy darted through the eager bliss of the idea of killing a deer to put it aside. What a pity that the real huntingregion was pushed away to such far-off limits now-a-days. Time was when this St. Regis country was full of game. ‘Yes, it’s a terrible pity,’ said Calvin, ‘ that everything is driven ofF to the wildest part. To my thinking a wood isn’t fairly a wood without live creatures in it, and no live creature >o belongs to a wood as a deer does. IT i < very colours . seem to make him a part of the forest it-1 self —the soft grey, tho brown, and the reddish yellow. You say to yourself, ‘ls it a branch that moves or is it an antler? Is that a sunbeam flickering through the leaves or is it a dappled spot on a deer’s coat?’ And to see'a deer bounding up a bank or clearing cover to take the water makes one feel that everything is alive.' ‘ And one never sees a deer here nowadays,’ said Fergus mournfully. ‘ Not so bad as that,’ said Calvin, and he went on to tell us how, while he was laying out this very camp in June, when he came bo stake a pasture for the cows he found the prints of a deer’s hoofs in the soft turf. Now, deer like certain kinds of food, and if they find it in any locality they are pretty sure to return. Accordingly when early one morning Calvin went out to finish his job he was not surprised to come upon two young deer • nibbling away at tho grass. They looked at him and be looked at them ; then they trotted off a few steps and fell to grazing once more. ‘ And you did nob shoot at them, Calvin ?’ asked Fergus incredulously. * Not a shot,’ returned Calvin. ‘To begin with, I had no gun with me —but that was only half the reason. A deer must die some time, and it is often my business to shoot a desv. Bub just then I was about other business and 1 liked to see the pretty creatures enjoying life. Sport is sport, and when your blood is up it is a good thing to bring your game down, but I should not have liked to fire just then.’ ‘ Bub you have to take- a deer whenever you find it,’ said Fergus. 1 Oh, I know that a deer is a deer and everybody is crazy to kill a deer, no matter what time of the year it is or whether it is a buck or a doe. Bub I’m old and I have seen a great deal, and I have come upon a doe with young who butted her fawn into the thicket out of harm’s way and then ran herself right before our guns. It’s that sorb of thing that takes the spirit out of hunting and makes us feel that we are all God’s creatures,think alike, enjoy alike and suffer alike, so ought to love and pity each other.’ Fergus’s face worked a little. ‘ 1 shouldn’t like to kill a doe who was trying to save her young,’ said he. ‘No, I would never do that.’ Bub it did seem to Fergus a terrible pity that he himself could not have como upon those two deer in the cow pasture and have had a shot at them. He pictured to himself how he would have stolen up to the inclosuro where the pretty beasts were grazing : then, when ha could get a good slanting shot at the furthest, no matter how hi 3 heart beat nor how his hand shook, he would bave pulled the trigger, brought down his quarry, then let go at the other. Possibly he would only have taken to the lake. Whereupon Fergus, resolute and bold, would have jumped into his canoe, rowed madly after the deer, sent another shot which told, then have thrown a good, stout lasso and so have drawn his prey ashore. Ah, what an experience bhatnvould have been ! Something to livo for and to remember all one’s life. He looked about him, hoping that some ! creature would eotne peering out of the thicket at him, that he might speed his bullet, which seemed eager to fly winged at his bidding. Bub nothing but a chipmunk moved, and the clouds above and the ripples on the water. Fergus, under Calvin’s training, was a fqjr shot by this time, although ho had so far no living mark. Just for practice he used to shoot at the water plant called deer-weed, whose two leaves stand up with exactly the delicate pointed shape and the tremulous motion of the ears of a deer listening and quaking at ary sound. It was no doubt a satisfaction to pierce the very ear he aimed at, as it were, out of a whole flock of deer ears. Once, as he was idly firing from his canoe in this way into tho thick bush vegetation which filled a shallow inlet, a blue heron flew up with a cry. Fergus, with a beating heart, reloaded, pushed on his boat and fired. The great bird cut a stately circle in the air, out of gunshot range, and sailed away. He dropped his rifle with a sigh ; he had missed, but he was not unhappy. How strange and lonely it had all seemed ; how like a picture ! He was now tired of thinking of the heron’s slow and majestic flight .over the marshes. He drew a breath of relief to realise that his bullet could nob have reached the beautiful, rare bird. Suppose he had shot it and it had fallen wounded in some place where he could nob get at it, and so have suffered until it died 1

It was a morning in August that Fergus started with Galvin to go up Mount St. Regis-a day of days. Years might pass awav and bring not another such day, It was “the kind of weather which every man enjoys once or twice when he is a boy, and which remains an imperishable iriemory,. so

when he grows old he believes that such glorious, golden weather was spread over all his youth, and he sighs and says, 4 Ah, there i? no such fine weather nowadays as there was when I was young.’ Young people laugh when they hear such speeches, but the time will come when they too shall bo old and will recall days like this when Fergus started with Calvin to ascend St. Regis. Fergus had his rifle. There was always the hope of a deer, and the boy, looking at the dreaming forest wilderness they were.to enter, was thrilled by a mysterious belief that to-day he was to have his long-coveted opportunity. They crossed their own lake to the ‘ Upper Spectacle Carry.’ Here Calvin drew the canoe up the steep bank, lifted it to his shoulders and walked towards Spectacle Lake. Fergus, unimpeded, hal dashed on and already stood on the verge of the beautiful sheet of water. He liked the place : it made him fancy all sorts of beautiful things. Perhaps he was thinking of ‘ Ellen, Lady of the Lake perhaps of old days when the shores of Spectacle Lake were much frequented by deer, who loved its pure waters and regularly came there to drink. It always seemed to the boy, when he stood on the brink, as if no man had ever been there before. No signs of axe or of fire had spoiled the shores on any hand. The waters, just ruffled by the breeze, mirrored the clouds and sky. Graceful white birches trailed their boughs in the water ; tamaracks, hemlocks, pines and spruces stood up straight and strong, fresh in their vigour of growth, neter having felt any influence save that of sun and wind and rain and snow. At the right towered St. Regis, shimmering in the August light with hues which changed colour like opals, pearl 3 and amethysts. It was so lonely that Fergus held his breath to Iqok. While he stood, forgetting everything except the joy of the moment, he know all at once that his guide had come up, and was about to move aside to make room for the keel of the canoe when he felt the pressure of Calvin’s hand on his shoulder. Fergus turned and the moment he saw the other’s face he knew that something was happening. Calvin stood with one end of the canoe in his hand, the other on the turf, and with bent head was listening with open mouth and strained ears. At first Fergus heard nothing bub his own heart-beats, then his senses cleared and he was conscious of a rustle and an occasional crackle. Looking up the bank he discerned the swaying of a bush which the wind did not stir. Something was moving there. At first it was like a mere tossing of the drooping, white-stemmed birches ; then in a moment it became certain that something shadowy, formless, like a moving twig was baking shape ; then all at once it gained upon the foliage—a head looked through ! It was the head of which Fergus had lovingly and longingly dreamed, a beautiful antlered head held proudly up, the eyes alert, the nostrils wide apart. As the creature broke from cover his mouth was hot and thirsty and eager to get out at the water.

‘ Does he see us ? whispered Calvin, who could read in Fergus’s iace as in a mirror what he himself could not see. - Fergus sheok his head. ‘Let him get well out of the bushes, then raise your rifle—yes, so,’ whispered the guide. Inch by inch Fergus had already lifted his rifle and was now looking along it when the deer advanced, running twenty feet nearer the spot whore his enomy lurked, then faced about with his nose bo tho mud, and assuring himself that all was safe in that quarter turned back, jerking his head well up, and etood, his ears at a sharp angle, directly facing Fergus. Fergus could see the beautiful, scared eyes of the deer. ‘ Fire,’ said Calvin. But instead Fergus dropped his weapon to his side. There was a sudden movement, a crashing of boughs and the place was empty. ‘ Why,Fergus !’ said Calvin, both disappointed and amazed, * why, Fergus !’ Ho looked curiously into the boy’s face and discovered thatcch bright eye had a tear in it and that the under lip was quivering. ‘ Oh, Calvin,’ said Fergus, with a half sob, ‘ I couldn t have done it, I couldn’t have had the heart to do it. I did not know it was like that. I’d die myself before I’d kill anything so beautiful.’ Ellen Olney Kirk.