<TITLE>16. Par 175-187</TITLE>L-175   So the next day we went hunting. And we usually take a sandwich, and--and take a little bottle of--of hot chocolate, 'cause it's got sugar in it, you know, and kept us warm. Yeah, it gets awful cold up there, along that time of year. So we...

L-176 The season was in. And--and when you fire a couple of guns, you talk about Houdini being an escape artist, he was an amateur aside of them deers. Cause, they would get away right now, crawl under brush piles or anything, and then feed at night if the moon was shining. Then, if they didn't, they would starve, before they'd come out, 'cause they knowed it was death to get out there. And so the season had been in, people had been hunting for a couple weeks.

L-177   And we walked all morning long, and didn't even see one track. Along about noontime, he was walking ahead of me. We was going up to the top of the notch, and then separate and come back two different ways, and come to the camp that night, maybe get in at nine, ten o'clock. If we killed a deer, we'd hang it up, so both of us go back the next day and help get it in. So we was going up, to separate, and we had not got to above the timber line yet.

L-178 And about eleven-thirty or twelve o'clock, Bert kind of stooped down. The snow was getting pretty deep, up high on the mountain. And he kind of stooped down, and I thought he had reached back... He didn't say very much. And he reached back there, I thought he was going to get his lunch; and I went to get my lunch. I thought, "Well, we'll eat. Here is where we separate, and he'll go around this a way, and I'll go the other way."

L-179   And he sat down. There was a little clearing, about twice the size of this building, just a little, what we call, a little park-like of grass. Never seen a track all morning. And he sat down there beside this, under, by some trees, kind of a little snowbank; reached down like this, like he was going to get his--his thermos bottle or his sandwich, started to pull it out. And I reached for mine. And he pulled out this little whistle. And he looked up at me, with them lizard eyes.

L-180 And he blew this whistle. And when he blew this whistle, he could really make it work, it sounded just like a little fawn. And when he did, to my surprise, right across that clearing, a great big mother deer stood up. That's the doe, the female; beautiful animal, big brown eyes, and them ears sticking up. And he looked up at me, like that, and kind of that silly grin. Looked up to me like that, put his whistle back. I thought, "Bert, you won't do that."

L-181 He said, "Sh." And I seen the... He blowed it again, real little, light.

L-182   And, now, that's unusual for that deer. That time of day, eleven o'clock in the day, come out? No. What was it? Her baby was in trouble. She raised up. I watched her, behind this bush.

L-183 And he blew it again. She made two or three steps forward, coming right out into the open.

L-184 That's altogether unusual. Yes, sir, she wouldn't do that. No, sir. But what was it? Her baby was in trouble.

L-185 And she walked a few steps farther, them big ears, she turned sideways. And old Bert looked up to me. And I thought, "Uh-oh." I seen him put that shell up in the barrel of that thirty-ought-six, and let the lever down.

L-186 Raised up, and that cross hair of that scope come right across her heart. And when he raised his gun, the deer saw the hunter. She turned.
And he blowed that whistle again.

L-187   You know, usually that deer would be gone. But not her. Why? She was a mother. She wasn't putting on something. On the inside of her, she was born a mother. Her baby was in trouble. Though she knowed it would cost her life, she didn't care. She was a mother. She wasn't putting on some kind of an act. It was genuine, her life. She was mother.


<A HREF="P17">Next Page</A>