Wild Adventures in Wild Places Page 3

said Fred quietly.

  And that "rabbit shoot" began Frank Willoughby's sporting adventures.They had a whole week of it, and very much they enjoyed it. ChestnutFarm was a dear old-fashioned, rustic, rumble-tumble of a place, with arolling country all around it, and the river quietly meandering throughits midst. They pitched their tent not far from the river; under canvasthey lived and ate and slept. Fred Freeman was a capital cook; he builthis fire of wood and hung his kettle-pot gipsy fashion on a tripod, andthe curries and stews he used to turn out were quite delightful. Thefarmer and his wife would fain have had them to live in their hospitabledwelling, but being told that Frank was undergoing the process ofhardening off and general tuition in camp and sporting life, the goodfarmer looked at the young man for a moment or two from top to bottom,just as if he had been a colt.

  "Oh!" he said, with a grunt of satisfaction, "bein' broke, is he? Well,a rare, fine, upstanding one he be. He'll do."

  But the farmer's wife sent to the tent every day the freshest of butterand sweetest of creamy milk, with eggs that never had time to get cool,and so, on the whole, they were very well off.

  It was deliciously comfortable, so thought Frank, this camping out. Hisbed was a hammock, and, though there were at first some things he lookedupon as drawbacks, he soon got used to them. If a heavy shower came onit made noise enough to waken the seven sleepers, and large drops usedto ooze in through the canvas. The gnats' bites were hard to put upwith, but Chisholm comforted him by bidding him "just wait until he wentto India and had a touch of the jungle bugs." Early to bed and early torise was our heroes' motto; early to bed to calm and dreamless slumber,such as your dwellers within brick walls never know; early to rise tohave a header in the river, and to return to breakfast as fresh as ajack; early to rise to get the lines and punt clear and ready for a fewhours' fishing; early to rise if only to hear the birds singing, towatch the squirrels skipping about aloft among the trees, or to observethe thousand-and-one queer ways of the tiny dwellers by the river side,friends in fur and friends in feather. Why, in one week Frank felthimself growing quite a naturalist.

  They had come down to shoot rabbits, but it must not be supposed thatthis was all the sport they had down by the charming river; for manywild-fowl fell to Frank's gun, and he procured a good many beautifulspecimens of birds, which he took the pains to skin and preserve for thepurpose of having them stuffed. A good deal of their time was spent infishing. They did not catch a Thames salmon, it is true, and graylingwere not in season; but there were trout and perch and jack inabundance, and one day, greatly to his joy, Frank landed a lordly pike.

  "I must tell you this, Mr O'Grahame and gen'l'm'n all," said the farmerto our friends on the very first day of their arrival, "I have an orderto kill five hundred to seven hundred rabbits, so there is plenty ofsport for you all, and 'specially for the young 'un that's bein' broke;but mind, gen'l'm'n, 'ware hare, that's wot I says, 'ware hare. Myman'll go with ye and see it is all right like, and my boys will carrythe bags."

  "Whatever does he mean by `'ware hare'?" asked Frank afterwards.

  "Why, that we mustn't shoot a hare on any account," replied Chisholm;"rabbits and nothing but rabbits."

  "Gearge," the farmer's man, went with them every day to help to carrythe rabbits our sportsmen killed. On the other hand, there were boys inthe rear to help Gearge. Besides Gearge and the boys, there were twodogs--a beautiful setter and a pointer, but good useful country dogs--dogs that did not think it beneath their dignity to retrieve as well asset and point. The most curious part of the whole business to youngFrank, was the fact that these dogs knew a hare from a rabbit at firstsight far better than he did. Well, to a young sportsman, to see abeautiful hare pass within easy shooting distance was a great temptationto fire. Frank had his doubts whether Gearge always knew one from theother, or t'other from which, because, no matter what it was, if Geargesaw only a bit of brown fur flitting from one bush to another, he sangout in stentorian tones, "'Ware hare."

  So it was "'Ware hare" all day long with Gearge. But once Frank didmake a mistake, or his gun did, for the latter seemed to rise to hisshoulder of its own accord, and next moment a hare was dead.

  The pointer brought it and laid it solemnly down at Frank's feet, andlooked up into his face.

  "See what you've done," he seemed to say; "here is a pretty kettle offish. What do you think of yourself? and how do you feel?"

  And when Gearge came up and saw the result of the accident, his red,round face, which, as a rule, was wreathed in smiles, got long, and hisjaw fell, while his eyes seemed wanting to jump out of their sockets.

  "Well, I never?" said Gearge, rubbing the palms of his hands nervouslyin his cow-gown, "and I warned ye sir, too."

  "Bag him," said Frank, "and never mind."

  "Bag 'im!" cried Gearge, aghast. "Bag _he_, bag a _hare_! No, sir, notif I knows it. Master'd give me the sack myself. We'll leave 'im tothe blue-bottles and the beetles; but oh! sir, in future, 'ware hare."

  "You seem fond of hare-shooting," said Fred that evening, when Franktold him his adventure, or rather misadventure. "Why, if you had beenwhere I was last winter you would have had hare-shooting to your heart'scontent."

  "Beaters was it you had?" asked Chisholm.

  "Yes, we had no dogs; but good sport, mind you--right and leftsometimes, and one to each barrel if you only chose to hold straight."

  About the third morning, when Gearge came to the tent as usual, his faceseemed rounder and redder than ever; his eyes, too, were so wreathed insmile-begotten wrinkles that they had almost disappeared. It wasmoreover observed that the pockets of his cow-gown were more bulky thanusual.

  "We'll have a rare lark to-day," said Gearge, pulling out first onepolecat ferret and then another.

  And so they had; for what with working the banks all the morning andshooting the rabbits in the open that succeeded in running the blockade,they had wonderful bags. Though Frank didn't say much, he was glad toget back to the tent; his feet were swollen, and he could hardly carryhis gun. He was certainly "bein' broke" with a vengeance.

  CHAPTER THREE.

  FRANK IS THOROUGHLY "HARDENED OFF"--DEER-STALKING IN THE HIGHLANDS--PARTRIDGE, PHEASANT, AND DUCK SHOOTING--"GOOD-BYE"--"NONE BUT THE BRAVEDESERVE THE FAIR."

  "How does he harden, Fred?" cried Chisholm, bursting all unannounced onemorning into the dining-room of a North Wales hotel, where Freeman andyoung Willoughby were just putting the finishing touches to a gloriousbreakfast, with boiled eggs and mountain trout. Chisholm had beenabsent for a whole week. "How does he harden?"

  "I think he is getting on famously. He's curing nicely."

  "I declare," said Frank, laughing, "you talk of me as if I were a ham orsomething; and Chisholm asks about me in the same tone of voice he woulduse if he wanted to know how your meerschaum coloured."

  "'Cause we're interested in you, dear boy," said Chisholm, feelingFrank's arm. "But, bless my heart," he continued, "there is a bicepsfor you; why, it's as hard as a hawser! And there's a sunburnt face foryou! Waiter, bring the beef. And what are you doing, boys?"

  "Well," said Fred, "you know we've been two months now under canvas, sowe thought we would try a week of civilisation. But we've had raresport enough, fishing in river and fishing in lake, and shooting almostwhatever we came across--rabbits, leverets, pigeons, plovers, anything."

  "Bad boys," said Chisholm. "But never mind, we're off to-morrow."

  "Where away?"

  "To the Highlands, the stern Scottish Highlands," said Chisholm. "I'mpromised a week among the deer. You're hard enough for that now,Frank."

  "What a ubiquitous trio we are, to be sure!" said Fred.

  They certainly seemed so, reader; for two days after the foregoingconversation they were dining at a quiet little hotel in Beauley, and byfour of the clock next morning they were on their way to the house ofDuncan McPhee, the head keeper of the great forest of Cairntree, one ofthe wildest tracts of country in the wild North. Though
termed aforest, it is only partially wooded; for gigantic hills, bare andrugged, tower skywards every here and there from amidst the pine-trees,and there are, too, vast tracts of bare brae or moorland, covered onlywith heather, the home of the grouse and the ptarmigan. Deer abound inthis forest in countless herds; but, saving the houses of the keepers,you might journey for days in all directions without seeing the smokefrom a single habitation.

  Early as our heroes were