<TITLE>20. Par 227-236</TITLE>L-227   I got up there late, one year, to hunt with him. There's only one fault I found to Burt. He was a good hunter, but he was the meanest man I ever met in my life. He had eyes like a lizard, them, kind of like slanted eyes, you know, like some women paint their eyes today, over, kind of like a cat, and she had. Had them kind of eyes, you know, kind of funny-looking eyes. And he used to be so cruel. He used to shoot fawns just to make me feel bad. And he used to say to me, "Aw, you preachers are chicken-hearted bunch," See?

L-228 And I said, "Burt, if the law says you can kill a fawn, that's all right, 'cause the--the size or the sex of the animal doesn't matter if the law says you can do it." See? I said, "There's nothing about killing a lamb. Abraham killed a lamb and fed it to God. That's right." I said, "Nothing about killing a fawn. But, Burt, you do it just to be mean. You shoot one, then shoot another, then shoot another. That's mean. That's not right to do that. That's murder."

L-229 He said, "Ah, Billy, get next to yourself. You're chicken-hearted like the rest of the preachers." Oh! He was cruel.

L-230   But that day when I went up there, my wife was with me. We went to the little cabin, lodge there, and the women folks, and get ready. And Burt and I left that morning. We always carried a--a--a thermos bottle full of hot chocolate, and a sandwich. And we'd hunt up till about noon, and then we'd separate, going up over the Presidential Range, and Mount Wilson, Mount Adams, and so forth. And then we'd separate and come back and get in the camp that night. We hunted the whitetail deer, really fine deer. So we...

L-231 That year, he said to me, when we left that morning, said, "Hey, Billy, I got a surprise for you. I'm going to get them this year."

L-232 I said, "What's that, Burt?" Reached down in his pocket and pulled out a little whistle that he had made, sound just like a little baby deer calling for its mammy. You know, the little fawn calling, that little "whee" noise made.
I said, "Burt, you wouldn't use something like that."

L-233 He said, "Aw, there you are. You're still chicken-hearted, aren't you?" And so we went on.

L-234   And it kind of late in the season. Them whitetail deer, when they are shot at, a few times, oh, my! You talk about hiding! Houdini was a amateur. So how they can hide! And so then we--we went till eleven o'clock. There was about six inches of snow on the ground. Didn't even see a track. They were really hid good.

L-235 So, along about eleven, twelve o'clock, there was kind of a drift of snow, and an open place, something the size of this room here. And Burt just was in front of me. He just stooped down like this, and started reaching back in his coat here. And I thought he would, we'd eat our sandwich, and then we would separate and go back to the camp, get back that night. He was feeling back. I thought he was going to get his bottle out, you know, with his hot chocolate, so I reached back to get mine. And when I did, he come out with this little whistle.

L-236   He looked up at me with them lizard eyes, you know, and put that little whistle in his mouth, like that. And he blowed it, just like a little fawn, or little fellow calling for its mother. And when he blowed that whistle, just across that clearing, a big mother deer, a doe, stood up. That's the mother deer. She jumped up. She heard that call of the baby. I could seen him look up at me, like that, and grin. I thought, "Burt, you won't do that. Surely you won't." And he duck his head down. He blowed again.


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