Читать книгу The Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace (Illustrated Edition) - John Crittenden Duval - Страница 7
ОглавлениеWALLACE’S INITIATION INTO THE MYSTERIES OF WOODCRAFT.
Soon after I came out to Texas, in 1837, said Wallace, being out of employment, and having no inclination to loaf around the “groceries” of a little village, I looked about for something to do; but for several weeks no “opening” presented itself. At length a surveyor, who was preparing for an expedition to locate lands upon the frontier, made me an offer to go with him, which I gladly accepted. At that time, as an Irishman would say, I was “as green as a red blackberry,” and I frankly told the surveyor that I knew nothing about the woods, or how to get along in them. But he said that made no difference, as the rest of the party were all old frontiersmen, and it was well enough to have one “green-horn” along to make sport for the balance.
It was a week or ten days before we were ready to start, and in the mean time I prepared myself for the “expedition” as well as I knew how. I had brought with me from Virginia a good rifle, a pair of Derringer pistols, and a bowie-knife, (that you know was before the days of six-shooters,) so that there was no necessity for my hunting up firearms. I bought a good stout Spanish pony, with saddle, bridle, etc., and laid in an ample supply of ammunition and tobacco; and when the surveying party were ready to start, I joined them “armed and equipped as the law directs.”
Our party consisted of a guard of two men, well armed and mounted, together with the surveyor, two chainmen, a marker, a hunter, and a cook, making in ail sixteen men—a sufficient force to travel with safety, at that day, in the most dangerous part of the country. At that time, one American, well armed, was considered a match for eight or ten Indians, with their bows and arrows and miserable guns; but now, thanks to the traders, they are well furnished with good rifles and “six-shooters,” and can hold their own, man for man.
The first day out, we travelled only a few miles, and encamped on a beautiful little clear stream, where I killed my first deer. I thought I had performed a wonderful feat, for I had never killed anything before larger than a squirrel or a ’possum, and I proudly returned to camp with the deer on my shoulders, trying all the time, though, to look as if the killing of a deer was no unusual thing with me. But the boys suspected me, and when I owned up that it was the first deer I had ever shot, two or three of them seized me, while as many more smeared my face and hands with the blood of the animal—a sort of ceremony, they said, by which I was “initiated” into the brotherhood of “mighty hunters.” I suppose I was “initiated,” as they called it, for I have killed many a hundred deer since that time, to say nothing of buffalo; bear, elk, wolves, panthers, Mexican lions, catamounts, and other “varmints” too numerous to mention.
