<TITLE>10. Par 42-45</TITLE>L-42 People know how I hate to see a woman smoke cigarettes, and the devil sends every cigarette smoker he can around me just to show off. If you don't show off you just show what you're made out of. That's all.
Now. And this guy... It's all right to shoot a fawn, if the law says you can have it. But not shoot a whole string of them just to be mean. The fawns all right. Abraham killed a calf and God eat it. It's no harm, but to be evil with it...
And he would like to do it just to make me feel bad. And one year when I went up there he'd made hisself a little whistle. And he could go just like a little baby fawn crying. And I said, "Burt, you're not going to use that."
He said, "Oh, Billy, get next to yourself. You preachers are chicken hearted."
I said, "No we're not, but we just don't have those evil things in us."
He said, "Get next to yourself."

L-43 And that day we hunted till about noon with the snow on the ground about like there is now. We had not even seen a track. We come lunch time about... I was behind him. There's a little clearing. And he kinda hunkered down. (Now, you southerners know what hunker down is.) And when he did, I thought he was going to take his lunch out, but what did he have? This little whistle. I thought, "He's not going to blow that." And he blew it. And to my surprise, not thirty yards away, a great big doe stood up.
Now, a doe is a mother deer. I could see the great veins in her face. Those big brown eyes, and great bulking ears. She stood up. She looked. Now, that's unusual at that time of day. Any hunter well knows that.
And he blew again. And she stepped out into the open. That's altogether contrary to the nature of the deer, to show himself in the open like that in the hunting season. And she was looking. What was the matter? She was a mother. Her baby was in trouble.

L-44 And Burt looked up to me with that real sheepish looking grin. I thought, "Oh, surely, Burt, you're not going to do that." And I seen him pull back the lever, throw a shell up into that .30-06. And he leveled down the gun, and when he did, the deer saw the hunter. She staggered. She looked. But she stood still then.
Usually they'll run away. But what was it? It was her baby in trouble. She wasn't putting that on. It was real genuine mother love. And she seen the hunter.
And I seen him level that rifle down. He was a dead shot. And I thought, "Burt, you surely can't do that." I thought, "In another second he will blow her heart plumb out the other side," just standing that close. And she was watching him. Yet death was facing her. She still was a mother. There was a real love in her. Her baby was in trouble, and if meant her life, she still walked out to face danger. She was looking for that baby.

L-45 I couldn't watch it. I knowed just any moment he would blow her to pieces. I turned my head, and I thought, "Oh, God, how can he be so brutal?" And I was listening to hear the gun go off. I waited and I waited. There was no fire.
I looked around, and the gun barrel was going like this. And he turned and looked at me. He threw the gun on the ground, and he grabbed me by the leg; he said, "Billy, I've had enough of it. Lead me to that Jesus that you know." Oh, right there on that snow bank. I led that cruel-hearted man to Christ, which is a lovely saint tonight. What was it? Because he found something real, a real love that could be displayed in the face of death.


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