"Then it hit brother 'n' me all of a heap that we'd be up agin it jest a leetle bit too hard t' stand if we hauled a blind buck into camp; fellers 'd swear that t' get t' kill a buck at all brother 'n' me had t' range th' bush till we struck a blind one; 'n' then they'd probably want us t'

go out 'n' see if we couldn't find some sick or crippled 'nough so we could get to shoot 'em.

"Brother was for leavin' him 'n' sayin' nothin'; but th' old feller had a grand pair o' horns it seemed a pity t' lose, 'n' so I just drove a .303 sideways through his eyes; 'n' when we got t' camp we 'counted for th'

two shots in him by tellin' them he was circlin' back past us 'n' we both fired t' wonst.

"'N' by cripes! t' this day n.o.body but youse knows that Con Teeples dogged 'n' still-hunted th' bush for two weeks for horns 'thout killin'

nothin' but a blind buck."

CHAPTER XI

THE LEMON COUNTY HUNT

One crisp winter morning a party of us left New York to spend the week end at the Lemon County Hunt Club. It was there I first met Sol, the dean of Lemon County hunters and for eight seasons the winner, against all comers, of the famous annual Lemon County Steeple Chase. At the hurdles, whether in the great public set events or in private contests, Sol was never beaten, while in the drag hunts it was seldom indeed he was not close up on the hounds from "throw-in" to "worry."

To the Club Mews he had come under the tragic name of Avenger, but such was the marvellous equine wisdom he displayed that at the finish of his third hunt in Lemon County, he was rechristened Solomon by his new owner--soon shortened to Sol for tighter fit among sulphurous hunt expletives. At that night's dinner Sol and his deeds were the chief topic of conversation and also its princ.i.p.al toast. And why not, when no hunting stable in the world holds a horse in all respects his equal?

Why not toast a horse now twenty-six years old who has missed no run of the Lemon County hounds for the last eight years, never for a single hunting-day off his feed or legs? Why not toast a horse that takes ordinary timber in his stride and eats up the stiffest stone walls for eight full hunting seasons without a single fall? Why not toast a horse with the prescience and generalship of a Napoleon, a horse who drives straight at all obstacles in a fair field, but who never imperils his rider's head beneath over-hanging boughs; who foresees and evades the "blind ditches" and other perils lurking behind hedges and walls and who lands as steady and safe on ice as he takes off out of muck? Why not toast this venerable but still indomitable King of Hunters?

The next morning it was my privilege to meet him. In midwinter, he of course was not in condition. Descriptions of his weird physique, and jests over his grotesquely large and ill-shaped head, made by half a dozen voluble huntsmen over post-prandial bottles, I thought had prepared me against surprise. Certainly they had described such a horse as I had never seen.

But having come to the door of his box, I was astounded to see slouching lazily in a corner with eyes closed, the nigh hip dropped low, a horse that at first glance appeared to be Don Quixote's Rosinante reincarnate, a gigantic "crow-bait" with a head as long and coa.r.s.e as an eighteen-hand mule's, an under lip pendulous as a camel's dropping ears nearly long enough to brush flies off his nostrils, with such an ingrowing concavity of under jaw and convexity of face as would have enabled his head to supply the third of a nine-foot circle, a face curved as a scimitar and nearly as sharp. Both in shape and dimensions it was the grossest possible caricature of a Roman-nosed equine head the maddest fancy could conceive.

Slapped lightly on the quarter, Sol was instantly transformed.

Eyes out of which shone wisdom preternatural in a horse, opened and looked down upon us with the calm questioning reproach one might expect from a rude awakening of the Sphinx; then the tall ears straightened and the great bulk rose to the full majesty of its seventeen hands; and while slats, hip bones, and shoulder blades were distressingly prominent, a glance got the full story of Sol's wonderful deeds and matchless record for safe, sure work.

With ma.s.sive, low-sloping shoulders, tremendous quarters, exceptionally short of cannon bone and long from hock to stifle as a greyhound; with a breadth of chest and a depth of barrel beneath the withers that indicated most unusual lung capacity, behind the throat-latch Sol showed, in extraordinary perfection, all the best points of a thoroughbred hunter that make for speed, jumping ability, and endurance.

And as he so stood, a flea-bitten, speckled white in color, he looked like a section out of the main snowy range of the Rocky Mountains: the two wide-set ears representing the Spanish Peaks; his sloping neck their northern declivity; his high withers, sharply outlined vertebrae, and towering quarters the serrated range crest; his banged tail a glacier reaching down toward its moraine!

Sol needed exercise, and that afternoon I was permitted the privilege of riding him. Mounted from a chair and settled in the saddle, I felt as if I must surely be bestriding St. Patrick's Cathedral. But at a shake of the reins the parallel ceased. His pasterns were supple as an Arab four-year-old's, his muscles steel springs.

Myself quite as gray as Sol and, relatively, of about the same age, as lives of men and horses go, we early fell into a mutual sympathy that soon ripened into a fast friendship. At Christmas I returned to the Club to spend holiday week, in fact sought the invitation to be with Sol. Every day we went out together, Sol and I, morning and afternoon.

Bright, warm, open winter days, so soon as the spin he loved was finished, I slid off him, slipped the bit from his mouth (leaving head-stall hanging about his neck), and left him free to nibble the juicy green gra.s.ses of some woodland glade and, between nibble times, to spin me yarns of his experiences. For the subtle sympathy that existed between us--sprung of our trust in one another and sublimated in the heat of our mutual affection had sharpened our perceptions until intellectual inter-communication became possible to us. I know Sol understood all I told him, and I don't think I misunderstood much he told me. So here is his tale, as nearly as I can recall it.

"Ye know I'm Irish, and proud of it. It's there they knew best how to make and condition an able hunter. No pamperin', softenin' idleness in box stalls or fat pastures, or light road-joggin', goes in Ireland between huntin' seasons. It's muscle and wind we need at our trade in Ireland, and neither can be more than half diviloped in the few weeks'

light conditionin' work that all English and most American cross-country riders give their hunters. Steady gruellin' work is what it takes to toughen sinews and expand lungs, and it's the Irish huntsman that knows it. So between seasons we drag the ploughs and pull the wains, toil at the rudest farm tasks, and thus are kept in condition on a day's notice to make the run or take the jump of our lives.

"Humiliatin'? Hardly, when we find it gives us strength and staying power to lead the best the shires can send against us: they've neither power nor stomach to take Irish stone and timber.

"'It's a royal line of blood, his,' I've often heard Sir Patrick say; 'a clean strain of the best for a hundred years, by records of me own family. His head? There was never a freak in the line till he came; and where the divil and by what misbegotten luck he came by it is the mystery of Roscommon. And it's by that same token we call him Avenger, for no sneerin' stranger ever hunted with him that didn't get the divil's own peltin' with clods off his handy Irish heels.'

"And the head groom had it from the butler and pa.s.sed it on to me that the old Master of the Roscommon Hounds was ever swearin' over his third bottle, of hunt nights, when I was no more than a five-year-old and the youngsters would be fleerin' at Sir Pat over the shape of me head:

"'Faith, an' it's Avenger's head ye don't like, lads, is it? By the powers o' the holy Virgin but it's me pity ye have that none of ye can show the likes in your stables. By the gray mare that broke King Charlie's neck, it's the head of him holds brains enough to distinguish ten average hunters, brains no ordinary brain pan could hold; an' it's a brain-box shape of a shot sock makin' the disfigurin' hump below his eyes. It's a four-legged gineral is Avenger, with the cunnin'

foresight of a Bonaparte and the cool judgment of a Wellington.'

"Ah! but they were happy days on the old sod, buckin' timber, flyin'

over brooks, stretchin' over stone or lightin' light as bird atop of walls too broad to carry and springin' on, with a good light-handed man up that knew his work and left ye free to do yours! And a sad night it was for me when Sir Pat, stripped by years of gambling of all he owned but the clothes he stood in and me, staked and lost me to a hunt visitor from Quebec!

"I was a youngster then, only a nine-year-old, but I'll niver forget the two weeks' run from Queenstown to Quebec whereon hunting tables were reversed and I became the rider and the ship me mount, across country the roughest hunter ever lived through: niver a moment of easy flat goin', but an endless series of gigantic leaps that nigh jouted me teeth loose, churned me insides till they wouldn't even hold dry feed, and gave me more of a taste than I liked of what I had been givin'

Roscommon huntsmen over lane side wall jumps--a rise and a jolt, a rise and a jolt, till it was wonderin' I was the ears were not shaken from me head.

"Humiliation? It was there at Quebec I got it! In old Roscommon usually it was lords and ladies rode me of hunt days, men and women bred to the game as I meself was.

"But at Quebec, the best--and I had the best--were beefy members of their d.i.n.key colonial Government or fussy, timid barristers I had to carry on me mouth. Seldom it was I carried a good pair of hands and a cool head in me nine years' runnin' with the Quebec and Montreal hounds. And lucky the same was for me, for it forced me to take the bit in me teeth, rely on meself, and regard me rider no more than if he were a sack of flour: I jist had it to do to save me own legs and me rider's neck, for to run by their reinin' and pullin' would have brought us a cropper at about two out of every three obstacles. Faith, and I believe it's an honest leaper's luck I've always had with me, anyway, for me Quebec work was jist what I needed to train me for an honorable finish with the Lemon County Yankees.

"One Autumn night years ago, when I was eighteen, a clever young Yankee visitor from New York appeared at our club. For two days I watched his work on other mounts, and liked it. He was good as any two-legged product of the old sod itself, a handsome youngster a bit heavier than Sir Pat, a reckless, deep drinkin', hard swearin', straight ridin'

sort, but with a head and hands ye knew in a minute ye could trust, by name Jack Lounsend. The third hunt after his arrival, it was me delight to carry him, and for the first time in years to allow me rider his will of me. And you can bet your stud and gear, I gave him the best I had, for the sheer love of him, and him so near the likes of me dear Sir Pat.

"Nor was me work to go unvalued, for, to me great delight, he bought me and brought me to the States--straight away to Lemon County--along with two of me huntmates he fancied. And a sweet country I found this same Lemon County, with timber and stone nigh as stiff, and sod as sound as old Roscommon's own.

"But troubles lay ahead of me I'd not foreseen. Instead of goin' into Jack's private string, as I'd hoped, the early record I made for close finishes and safe, sure work made me wanted by the chief patron of the hunt, a New York multi-railroad-aire with a well diviloped habit of gettin' everything he goes after. So, while I venture to believe Jack hated to part with me, the patron got me.

"And a good man up the patron himself proved, one I'd always be proud enough to carry; but, as Jack used to say, the h.e.l.l of it was the Lemon County Hunt numbered more bunglin' duffers than straight riders, the sort a youngster or a hot-head would be sure to kill.

"So when, as often happened, the patron was busy with faster runs and a hotter 'worry' than our hunt afforded, it frequently fell to me lot to carry the half-broke of all ages, seldom a one bridle wise to our game, as sure to pull me at the take-off of a leap as to give me me head on a run through heavy mud, the sort no horse could carry and finish dacently with except by takin' the bit in his teeth and himself makin'

the runnin'. And even so, it was a tough task fightin' their rotten heavy hands and loose seat! But, by the glory of old Roscommon, never once have I been down in me eight years with the Lemons!

"Once, to be sure, on me first run, by the way, I slashed into one of your brutal wire fences, the first I'd ever seen--looked a filmy thing you could smash right through--caught a shoe in it, and nigh wrenched a shoulder blade in two. Sure, I never lost me feet, but it laid me up a few days; and you can gamble any odds you like no wire has ever caught me since; and, more, that I now hold record as the only horse in the County that takes wire as readily as timber, where it's necessary--though sure it is I'll dodge for timber every time where I won't lose too much in place.

"Down they come to Lemon County, a lot of those New York beauties, men and women, togged out so properly you'd think they'd spent their whole lives in the huntin' field; but at the first obstacle you'd see their faces go white as their stocks, and then all over you they'd ride from tail to ears, their arms sawin' at your mouth fit to rip your under jaw off, like they thought it was a backin' contest they were entered for.

And sure back to the rear it soon was for them, back till the hounds were mere glintin' specks flyin' across a distant hill-crest, the riders' red coats noddin' poppies; back till only faint echoes reached them of the swellin', quaverin' chorus of the madly racin' pack; back for all but him or her whom old Sol had his will of,--for rider never lived could hold me to the wrong jump or throw me from my stride, nor was fence ever built I'd not find a place to leap without layin' a toe on it.

"Once the hounds give voice, it's the divil himself couldn't hold me, whether it's the short, sharp war-cry of the Irish or the sweet, deep bell-notes of these Yankee hounds that to me ever seem chantin' a mournful dirge for the quarry. Sure, it's the faster Irish hounds that make the grandest runnin', but it's the deep-throated mellow chorus of a Yankee pack I love best to hear.

"_Nouveaux riches_, whatever kind of bounders that spells, is what Bob Berry calls the lot of mouth-sawers New York sends us; and whenever the patron is out or Jack has his way, it's niver one of them I'm disgraced with.

"Sometimes it's me good old Jack up; sometimes hard swearin', straight goin' Bob; sometimes little Raven, as true a pair of hands and light and tight a seat as hunter ever had; sometimes Lory Ling, as reckless as the old Roscommon sire of him I used to carry when I was a five-year-old, with a ring in his swears, a stab in his heels, and a cut in his crop that can lift a dead-beat one over as tall gates as the best and freshest can take; sometimes it's Priest, that with the language of him and the h.e.l.l-at-a-split pace he'll hold a tired one to but ill desarves the holy name he wears; and sometimes--my happiest times--it's a daughter of the patron up, with hands like velvet and the nerve and seat of a veteran.

"Horse or human, it's blood that tells, every time, me word for that.

Be they old or young, you can niver mistake it. Can't stop anything with good blood in it--gallops straight, takes timber in its stride, and finishes smartly every time. Know it may not, but it balks at nothing, sets its teeth and drives ahead till it learns.

"And perhaps that wasn't driven well home on me last Fall!"

"Out to us came a little woman, a scant ninety-pounder I should say, so frail she wouldn't look safe in a drag, and a good bit away on the off side of middle age; but the mouth of her had a set that showed she'd never run off the bit in her life, and her eye--my eye! but she had an eye, did that woman. And it was h.e.l.l-bent to hunt she was, bound to follow the bounds, though all she knew of a saddle came of five-mile-an-hour jogs along town park bridle paths, and all her hands looked fit for was holdin' a spaniel.

"Well, it was Lory and Priest took her on, turn about, usually me that carried her, and it was break her slender little neck I thought the divils would in spite of me. Took her at everything and spared her nowhere, bowled her along across meadow and furrow, over water, timber, and walls, like she was a l.u.s.ty five-year-old, and all the time a guyin' her in a way to take the heart out of anything but a thoroughbred. 'Don't mind the fence!' Lory would sing out, 'if you get a fall, just throw your legs in the air and keep kickin' to show you're not dead; we never want to stop for any but the dead on this hunt.'

And smash on my quarters would come her crop, and on we'd go!

"Again, when we'd be nearin' a fence across which two were scramblin'

up from croppers, Lory would brace her with: 'Don't git scared at that smoke across the fence; it's nothin' but the boys that couldn't get over burnin' up their chance of salvation!' And into me slats her little heel would sock the steel, and high over the timber I'd lift her for sheer joy of the nerve of her!

"But it was not always me that had her. One day I saw a cold-blood give her a fall you'd think would smash the tiny little thing into bran; landed so low on a ditch bank he couldn't gather, and up over his head she flew and on till I thought she was for takin' the next wall by her lonesome. And when finally she hit the ground it was to so near bury herself among soft furrows that it looked for a second as if she'd taken earth like any other wily old fox tired of the runnin'.

"But tired? She? Not on your bran mash! Up she springs like a yearlin' and asks Lory is her hat on straight--which it was, straight up and down over her nigh ear. 'Oh, d.a.m.n your hat,' answers Lory; 'give us your foot for a mount if you're not rattled. Why, next year you'll be showin' your friends holes in the ground on this hunt course you've dug with your own head!' And up it was for her and away again on old cold-blood. Faith, but those cold-bloods make it a shame they're ever called hunters. Fall the best must, one day or another; but while the thoroughbred goes down fightin', strugglin' for his feet and ginerally either winnin' out or givin' his rider time to fall free if down he must go, the cold-blood falls loose and flabby as an empty sack, and he and his rider hit the ground like the divil had kicked them off Durham Terrace. Ah, but it was the heart of a true thoroughbred had Mrs. Bruner, and whether up on cold or hot blood, along she'd drive at anything those two hare-brained dare-devils would point her at, spur diggin', crop splashin'!