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SPORT ON THE CACTUS BORDER MajorGeneral Bullards Story of His Mexican Hunting Experiences lie Xative Follovrers the Chase in the Chaparral Among the woods and waters of the region of tin Great Lakes where last I hunted I cut his trailt this Chevalier La Salles and again today in far Southern Texas A wide wanderer he was Today with steam gasoline and electricity we go faster but no further By foot and canoe only he roamed this continent in its trackless day from Hudsons Bay to Corpus Cristi But no less than the Amer ¬ ican government of today the Chevalier found that the nearer Mexico the thornier the way His jour ¬ ney here proved his last and we will let him rest now though his name be still the call and lure of romance and adventure to all who love the daring and the wild writes MajorGeneral R L Bullard U S A in Sports Afield c cBefore Before the Mexican War the Nueces was the boundary between American and Mexican The river is still there but the boundary has crept is it still creeping southward the procession of the theMy My friend W told me how he had killed six sixhere here in half an hour deer and as for quail why just line Vm up and g et a mess messFine Fine But when was this thisSix Six years ago agoCollapse Collapse So when others asked me Going hunting I answered Xo only out and away to other scenes for awhile It is well always to have a getaway The Filipinos taught us that thatI I said that the Xucces country is no longer even near the border Our hostess at Bonnie View Ranch talked easily of Boston and New York and pictures of the New England poets and essayist were scattered amoung buckheads and the faces of old Texan ranchmen on the walls I had thought it all of the past but the generous hospitality the big house and the broad acres about it the talk of horses and hunting and riding brought to mind like an unreal dream the stories of country life of English and Southern gentry of the long ago If I could but call up its image before your mind But onlv a novel or a romance could do it a Wilkie Collins or a John Esten Cooke or better far five minutes of our gracious hostess hostessBut But Bonnie Views habits and hospitality were not the only reminders of the Past It was Sun dav A countrv church and a circuit riding parson of the tv c of pioneer America Sunday school and preachin divided the day with Bob White in the great pasture Brother K was born in old Kentucky Like another of Kentuckys products age had but mellowed him and in his sermon he illowcd us sinners some hope Not so the Sunday school teacher His subject was temperance and listening 1 recalled the remark of a shrewd old Bishop It is better to have to do with the Lord than to fall into the hands of his saints saintsBY BY MOTOR CAR INTO CHAPARRAL CHAPARRALFrom From a neighboring ranch only twelve miles awav a mustang of a young ranchman came with bis machine to sink up deeper into the Texas chaparral How was he to do it Was it a flying machine No an auto Are there then roads lie needed none He was of the breed that without roads had come from the Mississippi to the Rio Grande GrandeBut But how did he do it I do not know and shall not attempt to tell except to say that through sand sind chaparral across rroyos and down barrancas over mesquite and cactus we went undehiyed and unafraid to the uttermost place that we desired If W can only find old Sam M exclaimed W who though young had lived with and loved the rough men of the west from this Texas border through the United States and Canada to beyond the Arctic Circle Ah Colonel you would love bini for his character rude open and independent Here evidently was something more than a hunter for while we had come to hunt my companion had forgotten at first the hunter Iut lie is a hunter too and used to have doss trained to all the game of the country And he destroyed it How he destroyed it especially when be thought the law or some one was trying to pre ¬ serve ind reserve it itMr Mr M was evidently a true born American AmericanHe He is a iwacber from conscience and a firm be ¬ liever in tht equal rights of all men to the game God put in the world whether He put it upon one or another mans land He is a sportsman too He has all the spirit though he violates all the rules of sport sportWe We found him Wo had little difficult for we beard of and might have heard him thirty miles away You may have seen men like him but not in iivilization Civilization does not produce them The wilderness alone produces them Civilization moulds all men alike to commonness The wilder ¬ ness alone developes those rude and striking charac ¬ ters that draw and please us that catch the worlds attention Is it not so It is Natures w rk The product of civilization is mans and repulsive repulsiveWeecell Weecell Ill be If it aint W come back backhere here after five years to hunt up old Sam Weeell WeeellIll Ill b The mans voice was a roar a hubbub hubbubof of voices not a single voice It was a chorus of bhonts or rather barks of welcome There was no mistaking it It came from the heart a thing the more surprising for what the old man was at the time actually about making himself a home deeper in the chaparral getting further away from men who might come as we had come to disturb his life LONG HUNTER OF PREJUDICE PREJUDICEVhat Vhat are you doing here Sam asked W The wilderness most attrac ¬ tive characters can be brought into literature only by expurgation and that for both vulgarity and profanity They wnz acrowdin me back there But here Willie be called to a figure doubled up by the cauip fire let me hiterjuce ycr to these gentlemen Willie extended himself into C feet 2 inches and ISO pounds of rawboned Texan and was duly interjuced as Mr James Later Mr M informed me that Willie was a halfr breed breedHalf Half breed I questioned on the Mexican bonier thinking naturally of Mexican half breeds He is as typical looking a western American as I ever saw Still one cannot tell I suppose his father was an American and his mother a white Mexican woman womanYere Yere right txjut his father He wus an Ameri ¬ can but his mother warht no Mexican She was er Irish catholic catholicWe We were soon settled in Mr Ms camp and plan ¬ ning a hunt for the next few days Two things were almost at once borne in upon me here as everywhere that 1 nowadays hunt The first was that Deer is skeerce round here this year cept on old man Soandsos place and he wouldnt let the Almighty Hisself hunt there The second was a deep seated native hatred of any man who attempted to preserve his game against public banting and a firm purpose to beat both him and all the law that aided him therein The untrani meled and nntramnielabla American I have had said the master of Boflnie View Ranch to me seventeen thousand acres in my pasture room for all kinds of game But IJiave many neighbors who if I attempted to preserve it would make things so hot for me that Id have to get out of the country countryAll All this augured ill forour hunt For in Texas all the world hunts and where everybody wants a thing theres none of it for anybody anybodyLong Long before day1 a tremendous roaring half growling half barking rstartled my sleepy ear earWell Well Ill be bhinkety blanked if them all sorts of blanks rats aint gone and drug off every sweet pcrtater there was in camp nigh on to a bushel an you fellers aint goiu to git nothin but sow belly and coffee FIELD RATS BY THE MILLION MILLIONWhen When niidway of the above my startled senses had gathered that it was not a pantherbr a moun ¬ tain lion that was letting out the fearful sound the waking that followed seemed almost sweet and the menu announced good enough for anybody Thfe nits I knew were not the world accurst creatures of Mr Ms language There were to be sure millions arid millions of them but they were the mild field variety They live upon and keep sup ¬ pressed the prickly pear cactus that would otherwise close this region to man and beast They are nb more than a shading down so to speak from Mexi ¬ cans and cactus to the United States And Mr M recovered his potatoes too IIITI Short time some one found them all neatly piled on a heap of dry bark and twigs As they were manifestly better put by the rats than they had been by Mr M who had left them scattered on the ground near the fire to be stepped upon and crushed under foot by common consent we left them on the rat house until we needed them But we hunted too Xow there are today two men who get big game the rich man who has it pre ¬ served and ready to his gun and the Indian the trifler to whom time makes no difference We were neither But in the search I found many coyote quail as Sam called the Mexican blue quail and I afterward spent two delightful half days in the close mesquite and chaparral where to make one kill carries the joy of half a dozen and half a dozen the conviction that ypu are the champion shot of the world Hunting alone in the far south one feels not the dread lifelessness and silences of the far northern woods It is more cheery By dqy birds rabbits and rats keep you company eyeing you wisely and curiously and making cheerful little noises near you By night you sleep to the full chorus of a single far away coyote or the solemn voice of some old owl who now on this side now pn that and last in the distance keeps asking you as he always asked tlit old darkies of the bygone south Yis tiddy ebeiiin dyer feed de sheep sheepWhile While I found quail my companions in the wide wanderings caught by the night found only cactus thorns and experience Ten miles deeper into the chaparral driven by the mustang and guided by Sam who never ceased to taunt the mustang with inferiority to the only other auto driver one Laurence that he Mr M hail ever ridden behind behindLaucnces Laucnces machine must a cost three thou ¬ sand dollars I reckon this cost about five hundred hundredLauence Lauence never would a turned for that ditch Hed a gone straight on over it itLauence Lauence runs his machine straight oin over all kinds of brush and saplings saplingsI I never seen nothin like that Lauence for forLaTiVnce LaTiVnce brung his whole family and mine down here in half sin hour hourUgh Ugh Man what a bump Tryin to throw us all out outREVENGE REVENGE OF TEE MUSTANG MUSTANGBut But the mustang had his revenge At first lightly and then with increasing frequency and concern he referred to the exhaustion of the gaso ¬ line away off here where we can get no more He kept returning to the subject hed stop and stoy again fumble around peer into his tank and look glum Slowly but surely it took effect on Sam who at last lost all faith in the machine and declaring that his gasoline never had and never would run out abandoned us and hoofed it everv inch of the way back to camp there to be received iiiwn his arrival with jeering toots by the mustang who had t course come in with ease far ahead It aheadIt was not easy for old Sam to get over that He sho is a queer one said Willie speaking to nie of this incident and referring to Sam in the hitters hearing I tell you what he done here long time ago He hired a feller to dig hlm a well and when the feller down thirty feet in the well called for the big iron crowbar Sam Jest let her drop down to him As she wdnt down she swung round and round in the well whanged up agin the sides and jest missed smashlu in that fellers head Well sir that feller jest gasped and fell up agin the side of the well but knowin what sort of a man Sam was he dassent make a howl about it while he was down tliere because he was afcard Sam wouldnt haul him up at all So he never lets on then but after a while says he reckons he better come up for a rest and to git some fresh air So Sam draws him up When he Kits ID he sorter sidles off from betwixt Sum and the well to make himself safe and then he lets loose He rips and snorts and cusses and asks Saiu what he meant by tryiu to kill him with the crowbar and he quits and swears that he aint goin down into that well again and ho wouldnt And Sam got mad and swore he wouldnt pay him for what work he had done because he wouldnt finish his contract and he didnt didntBut But I did said Sam Eighteen year after that we shuck hands and I paid him but 1 oughtnt to a done it If I hadnt a paid him a cent it would a served him right for quittin his contract for a trifle like that thatUnusual Unusual But the Texan has never in times past been noted for the high estimate that he has placed upon the life of another fellow Nor has that other fellows Mexican nationality added to the estimate Some time ago I was aridln after a yearling down on the river and was just about to rope him himwhen when a yalier of a Mexican shot at athim him I dunno why he done it but just to 1arn him his nlncc I jerked my sixshooter and let her go two br three times back at him I never looked to see whether I hit him or no and I didnt keer but they found a dead Mexican down there two or three weeks afterward I never said a word wordWhy Why I didnt know you had any Mexicans in this neighborhood z zOh Oh yes lots of em emWhere Where WhereRight Right down there sixtyfive miles milesThe The neighborhood in Texas is proportional to the sire of the state stateBut But the gasoline did run out By luck we met one of Lauences men Do you think we can get some gasoline at your ranch ranchYell Yell get it if theres any there thereLaconic Laconic hospitable like the Texan of old who always left his hut open and table set for any guest that might come in his absence At the gates of the wilderness says Emerson the surprised city man must leave behind lib ideas of great and small wise and foolish
