<TITLE>13. Par 40-42</TITLE>L-40 We went hunting that day, and we were out in the wilderness walking around. We'd been maybe a half a day. It was getting near dinner time; we hadn't even seen a track. It was a great opening like that, and the snow had been melted off pretty well there where the sun had hit. And he kinda stooped down. I thought, "What's he going to do?"
I seen him reach in his pocket; he comes out with this little whistle. I thought, "Oh, my." And he took that little whistle and he went just like a little baby deer crying. And no more then he'd did that, till just across the way a big beautiful mother deer, called the doe, raised up. She looked around.
I can just see her now, those big brown eyes, those big ears, the veins in her face; how pretty she stood. She looked around. I seen Burt look up at me and grin; I thought, "Oh, Burt, you're not going to do that."
Smiled and he ducked his head down. I couldn't watch it; I turned my head. And I heard the chamber come back as the--the lever come to pull his cartridge up into the barrel. Oh, he was a dead shot.

L-41 And I knowed that deer wasn't standing over thirty yards. And I looked around again; I seen him level that steady nerve, putting that cross hair right across the heart of that mother. She looked around; she heard that baby's cry. She come walking right out into the middle of that little place, right out in the open.
Why? She couldn't help it; she was a mother. She by nature was a mother. She wasn't putting that on, but she was a mother to begin with, and there was a baby in trouble, and she must get to it; it was in trouble. It was something in her. Any other time she'd been scared to death; that's what she was hiding back in the bushes for, to keep away from that light place till it got night, and then she'd go out and feed. But the baby was in trouble. The mother instinct called her. It was duty.

L-42 She walked out, listening again with those big ears up. And I seen his nerve as he quieten down; I turned my head; I thought, "Oh, God, don't let him do that."
I knowed in a few moments time, just a second or two, and that bullet of that .30-06 rifle would blow that mother's heart plumb through the other side of her. And I thought; that gallant display of real love, that mother loving that little baby so much that she was walking out there... And I looked, and she'd seen the hunter; she stopped. Those big ears come to a point; she caught the scent of him, and she stood there. But the mother's love, she couldn't help it. She went walking on hunting that baby. [Blank.spot.on.tape--Ed.] It wasn't put-on; it was the real thing. She was walking right in the face of death, because she was a mother.
I turned my head, I said, "God, how can that cruel-hearted man do that?"
And while I was praying, I noticed the silence. I heard nothing; I thought, "Why don't the gun fire?"
And when I turned to look, I seen the rifle barrel going like this. He dropped the rifle on the ground, and turned around, and grabbed me by the pants leg, and he said, "Billy, I've had enough of it. I can't stand it no more. Tell me about that Jesus that put that kind of love into a man's heart." There on that snowy ground, that cruel-hearted man, by the display of a real genuine love, led that man to Christ.


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