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“I’ll take a circuit around, and come out about the lower end of your mot,”* said I to my companion. “You remain here; lie down flat, and I’ll warrant the old doe and her fawns will be found retracing their steps.”

[*]
Mot

is the name given small clumps of trees or woods, found scattered over the prairie land of Texas.

We had started from camp about sunrise, to hunt, three of us; one, an old hunter, who, after marking out our course, giving us the lay of the land, and various admonitions as to the danger of getting too far from camp, looking out for “Injin signs,” etc., “Old Traps,” as we called him, took a tour southward, and left us. Myself and companion were each armed with rifles; his a blunt “Yeager,” by the way, and mine an Ohio piece, carrying about one hundred and twenty balls to the pound, consequently very light, and not a very sure thing for a distance over one hundred yards. It was in the fall of the year, delightful weather: our wardrobe consisted of Kentucky jean trousers, boots, straw hats, two shirts, and jean hunting shirts–all thin, to be sure, but warm and comfortable enough for a day’s hunt. We trudged about until noon, firing but once, and then at an alligator in a bayou, whose coat of mail laughed to scorn our puny bullets, and, barely flirting his horny tail in contempt, he slid from his perch back into the greasy and turbid stream. Seating ourselves upon a dead cotton-wood, we made a slight repast upon some cold pone, which, moistened with a drop of “Mon’galy,” proved, I must needs confess, upon such occasions, viands as palatable as a Tremont dinner to a city gourmand. While thus quietly disposed, all of a sudden we heard a racket in our rear, which, though it startled us at first, soon apprised us that game was at hand. Dropping low, we soon saw, a few yards above us, the large antlers of a buck. He darted down the slight bluffs, followed by a doe and two well-grown fawns.

As they gained the water, and but barely stuck their noses into the drink, we both let drive at them: but, in my rising upon my knee to fire at the buck, he got wind of the courtesies I was about to tender him, and absolutely dodged my ball. I was too close to miss him; but, as he “juked”–to use an old-fashioned western word–down his head the moment he saw fire, the bullet merely made the fur fly down his neck, and, with a back bound or double somerset, he scooted quicker than uncorked thunder.

Our eyes met–we both grinned.

“Well, by King,” says my friend Mat, “that’s shooting!”

“Both missed?” says I.

“Better break for camp, straight: if we should meet a greaser or Camanche here, they’d take our scalps, and beat us about the jaws with ’em!”

It was thought to bear the complexion of a joke, and we both laughed quite jocosely at it.

“Now,” says I, “old Sweetener,” loading up my rifle, “you and I can’t give it up so, no how.” Tripping up a cup of the alligator fluid, we washed down our crumbs, and started. We followed the deer about two miles up the bayou; the land was low prairie bottom, ugly for walking, and our track was slow and tedious. But, approaching a suspicious place carefully and cautiously, we had another fair view of the doe and fawns, feeding and watching on the side of a broad prairie. The distance between us was quite extensive; we could not well approach within shooting distance without alarming them. The only alternative was for my friend Mat to deposit himself among the brush and stuff, and let me circumvent the critters; one of us would surely get a whack at them. I started; a slow, tedious scratch and crawl of nearly a mile got me to the windward of the deer. As I edged down along the high grass and chapperel, about a branch of the bayou, the old doe began to raise her head occasionally, and scent the air: this, as I got still nearer, she repeated more frequently, until, at length, she took the hint, and made a break down towards my friend Mat, who, sharp upon the trigger, just as the three deer got within fifty yards, raised and fired. ‘Bout went the deer, making a dash for my quarters; but before getting any ways near me, down toppled one of the young ‘uns. Mat had fixed its flint; but my blood was up–I was not to be fooled out of my shot in that way; and perceiving my only chance, at best, was to be a long shot, off hand, as the doe and her remaining fawn dashed by, at over eighty yards, I let her have the best I had; the bullet struck–the old doe jumped, by way of an extra, about five by thirty feet, and didn’t even stop to ask permission at that. A sportsman undergoes no little excitement in peppering a few paltry pigeons, a duck or a squirrel, but when an amateur hunter gets his Ebenezer set on a real deer, bear, or flock of wild turkeys, you may safely premise it would take some capital to buy him off.