The Cross Timbers

by Edward Everett Dale

  We crossed the orchard and entered the woods to the north of it. Quite a large stretch of woodland here extended north to a road running east and west between the Clark and Taylor farms. In the woods were many dense thickets of underbrush interlaced with greenbrier and sarsaparilla vines. These furnished excellent homes for rabbits and coveys of quail, being almost impenetrable for hawks and nearly as difficult for human enemies with guns to infiltrate. Here we jumped three or four rabbits, but they scurried away so fast that there was no chance for a shot at one.

  Doubling back to the edge of our own east field we saw a few doves; when one alighted on a nearby tree George raised the old musket and fired. Down came the bird and we had our first item for the capacious game bag. George was very proud of his marksmanship but I later came to realize that he could hardly have missed, as the dove was scarcely twenty-five yards away.

  We continued our hunt, turning north through a long stretch of fairly open timber. This was not good quail territory, but we again jumped several cottontail rabbits. All of them scampered away, however, and my brother had no intentions of wasting powder and shot on any moving target. His attitude was like that of Dow Taylor, who later remarked to me, “You know Ed, lots of times I can’t hit ’em when they’re sittin’ still.”

  At long last, a young cottontail hopped out of a small thicket and paused to look around before deciding which way to run. It was a fatal mistake. The old musket spoke again and George dashed forward to pick up the kicking rabbit, bang its head against a tree, and hand it to me for the game bag. As by this time it was growing late we started for home because in Father’s absence we had to do all the evening chores, including milking two cows. When we entered the thick woods north of the orchard George suddenly stopped. I could hear a slight rustling of the dry leaves in a thicket some twenty yards ahead of us but could see nothing. Evidently George, who was three or four steps ahead of me could, however, for he fired and a dozen or more quails flew up from the thicket. George dropped the gun and ran at full speed to retrieve his game.

  “How many did you get George?” I called as he dropped to his knees and reached out with both hands to seize the still fluttering quails.

  “One, two, three of ’em,” he exclaimed excitedly as he got to his feet and brought the birds back to me to be put in the game bag.

  “You sure did run fast to pick ’em up after you shot!”

  “That’s the way to do,” he replied. “If you don’t get there quick, a crippled one may run off. When you shoot any game you’ve got to run to pick it up. Sometimes you’ll just stun a rabbit or squirrel and he’ll get up and run off if you don’t run and pick him up right now!”

  This ended our first day’s hunt, and we hurried home to show the results to Alice, who was quite impressed by our success. In fact, we were quite proud of our afternoon’s work ourselves.

  George’s haste to retrieve his game reminded me of a yarn told by our brother Tom. He said that a certain man who was very good at throwing rocks complained that he could knock a rabbit over with a rock at twenty or thirty yards very easily, but it always got up and ran away before he could get to it. A friend told him to run faster and seize the rabbit before it recovered from the shock. He was then more successful, but eventually he developed so much speed that one day he threw at a rabbit and ran so fast to pick it up that the rock came along and hit him in the back!!

  We found later that bagging three quails, one dove, and one rabbit on our first afternoon of hunting was a case of “beginner’s luck.” For the next few months we hunted most of our spare time, but if the household had been forced to rely upon the game we brought in for its meat supply the entire family would have become largely vegetarians. Yet, we never grew discouraged. Any day when it was too wet to pick cotton and we were not busy with other work, we were in the woods and fields with George carrying the gun while I tagged along behind.

  Moreover, to us “meat was meat,” as the old-time plainsmen used to say. There were no game laws, no closed season, and no bag limits, although the last named would not have affected us. George shot quails, squirrels, rabbits, doves, meadow larks, and once a prairie chicken, of which he was very proud.

  For some three months I was fairly content to accept the role of game-bag bearer and general assistant for George. If we sighted a squirrel in a tree, however, I could be a real help by going to the opposite side of the tree and making enough noise to induce the squirrel to slip around to the side of the trunk where George stood with the gun ready for a shot. This tendency of a squirrel to keep the tree trunk between himself and the hunter created endless debate as to whether a man going around the tree went around the squirrel!

  It was always fun to go hunting with George doing all the shooting, but eventually I developed a yen to test my own marksmanship with the old musket. February 8 was my eighth birthday. Early in the afternoon Alice went over to see Mrs. Clark, George had been sent to Keller on an errand, and Father was grubbing out stumps in the far side of a newly cleared field. It looked to me like a golden opportunity to celebrate my birthday by going hunting.

  Very carefully I took the old musket from the rack on the wall, which George had made to hold it. I then stuffed paper in one pocket, the box of caps and charger in another, and with powder and shot horns hanging from a strap over my left shoulder and the old gun over the right one. I sallied forth in search of game.

  The old musket was loaded and so was I—with all the impediments to carry, plus a gun considerably longer than myself. I crossed one corner of the field east of the orchard and entered the dense woods where George had killed the three quails on our first-day’s hunt. My fondest hope was to find another covey of quail and mow down at least four or five at one shot.

  If I had met with such good fortune it is doubtful if anyone could have lived with me for the next month or so with any degree of comfort. Fortunately, for my family and playmates, Lady Luck was not with me nor were the shades of Diana, Nimrod, Daniel Boone, Buffalo Bill, or any other great hunters of the past. Neither quails, rabbits, nor squirrels came in view. At last a bright-colored bird which we called a “yellowhammer,” doubtless a flicker, alighted on the branch of a tree not over fifty or sixty feet away. In desperation I eased my conscience by saying to myself that the plumage would be excellent to feather my arrows. The gun was too heavy for me to hold up but I rested it in the fork of a bush, sighted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

  At the report of the gun the bird fell dead, for it would have been almost impossible to miss at that range. I reloaded the gun very carefully but decided to call it a day and go home. My father said that he saw me heading for the woods with the gun and was a little uneasy but decided not to stop me. Neither George nor Alice seemed to think it unusual for a boy of my age to go hunting with an old musket, but today most mothers and fathers would faint at the sight of their eight-year-old son-and-heir headed for the woods with a man-size gun.

  Within a few months we found that the spring in the lock of the old musket was hardly strong enough to explode the big “hat caps,” but frequently snapped. Moreover, the big musket caps were not carried in stock by our local stores, as the double-barrel muzzle-loading shotgun was the favorite type of gun in the Cross Timbers. George and I, therefore, spent many hours patiently filing down the tube of our old gun until it was small enough to accommodate the standard-size percussion caps made for shotguns.

  When spring came a great many migratory plovers stopped over on the prairies for a short time before continuing their flight north. Also, there was a large increase in the number of doves and larks, although some of both these birds, especially larks, remained on the prairie adjoining our section of the Cross Timbers all winter.

  The old musket was our only gun until Alice and I took the train for the West in October, 1888. When Father and George joined us some six weeks later they brought with them a double-barrel muzzle-loading shotgun. George explained to me that they had traded a cow for it and that th
e old musket had again been relegated to the attic bedroom.

  George stayed in Greer County only three or four months and went hunting with Henry only two or three times. The only time that I went with them was on a hunt for turkeys on the nearby Indian Reservation. Here were huge flocks of turkeys, which increased very rapidly because of the Indians’ taboo against eating them.

  We took a wagon and team, crossed the river which was the Reservation boundary, and camped on the eastern branch of Otter Creek, which was called Dry Otter because it seldom had any water in it except immediately after a heavy rain. It was near sunset when we stopped to camp, and looking up stream we were thrilled to see a long file of wild turkeys moving along in the edge of the timber, which bordered the creek. They were not over two or three hundred yards away and clearly would be going to roost in the trees within an hour at most. Henry, who had been a professional hunter, said that we should make camp and cook supper. By the time we had eaten, it would be dark and the turkeys roosting in the trees could be easily shot.

  Unfortunately, soon after dark we heard from up the creek the noise of a great flapping of turkey wings. Henry declared that the big birds had gone to roost but had been distrurbed by some prowling animal, probably either a bobcat or a panther. We waited an hour for them to get settled down again. Then, hoping that they had not traveled too far, we started up the dry, sandy bed of the creek in search of them.

  Henry and George were in front with the guns, and I trudged along behind. It was hard walking on the loose sand, and although we walked for what seemed to me several miles the great flock of turkeys had completely disappeared. Henry took one shot at a dark object near the top of a tree, but it proved to be only the empty nest of a squirrel! At long last we despaired of finding the huge flock of turkeys and made our way back to camp. When we finally reached it I could barely put one foot in front of the other. The next morning we returned to Navajoe, as Henry had to get back to work.

  Obviously this expedition had nothing to do with hunting in the Cross Timbers, but it gave me an experience to relate with considerable embellishments to my young associates when we returned to our own home a few months later.

  Soon after this brief hunting trip George returned to the Cross Timbers to work for our brother Tom. He did not take the shotgun with him, as he rode down to Vernon, Texas, with Henry and from there by train to Keller. When Father and I followed him by wagon a few months later the old double-barrel gun proved most useful. It was early June and the spring crop of young rabbits, about half-grown, was good. During the entire journey of ten days we had fried young rabbit for supper almost every evening and found it equal to fried chicken.

  For a few weeks after reaching our destination we were too busy helping Tom to get any hunting done, but during the weeks we stayed at the Briley house we had little to do except feed and water the pigs and milk the cows. Although it was hot as the hinges of Hereafter, we spent most of the time ranging the woods in search of game. Here we were farther down in the woods and there were some groves of hickory trees, so that the red squirrels were quite numerous.

  Later, when we went out to Parker County and camped on Walnut Creek, George and I spent every day that was too damp to pick cotton hunting along the stream. A good many coveys of quail were in the thickets near the banks of the creek or in the edges of the nearby fields. In addition, we found more squirrels here than in our home community, for there were more walnut trees to supply them with winter food.

  While we were picking the overflowed field of cotton for Mr. Chandler, Father went up to his house one day on some errand. When he returned to camp he reported with some interest that Chandler had a genuine old Kentucky squirrel rifle and had suggested that he might be willing to trade it for our double-barrel shotgun.

  “I haven’t seen one like it for years,” Father said with considerable enthusiasm. “It’s just the kind of gun I always wanted when I was younger. Of course if you boys want to keep the shotgun we won’t trade, but I wanted to tell you about it.”

  Both George and I were intrigued by the idea of getting a different gun. The locks of the old shotgun were getting a bit weak so that it sometimes snapped, usually at the most critical time. We assured Father that a trade would be all right with us.

  The next day Mr. Chandler brought the rifle down to camp and as we examined it our enthusiasm grew. It was considerably longer than the old musket and had a “full stock,” that is, reaching nearly to the end of the long octagonal barrel. It also had set triggers, and the mountings on the shoulder plate and elsewhere were of polished brass. It looked brand new, although it must have been made soon after percussion caps came in to replace the earlier flintlock guns. The exact caliber we never knew, but a bullet mold that came with it indicated that it was about .25.

  Mr. Chandler suggested at first that he should have about $2.50 “to boot,” in Cross Timbers lingo. Father in reply questioned whether either gun was worth that much; at last Chandler agreed to an even trade. George was much pleased with the exchange and was very proud of his new gun, which at least attracted the attention and interest of everyone who saw it.

  Soon after this transaction had been completed we packed our possessions in the wagon and returned to Tom and Lucy’s place. A few weeks later, when we gained possession of our own home, almost my first act was to resurrect the old musket from the attic bedroom. I set to work polishing it up, as it apparently had not been touched since we left home.

  From that time until we left the Cross Timbers home nearly three years later the old musket was my gun, while the long squirrel rifle was George’s personal property. We bought bars of lead to be melted and moulded into bullets. Because these were carried in a small leather pouch George gave me the horn in which we had been accustomed to carrying shot. I used this for powder and made myself a new horn for shot, using a small saw to cut off the ends smoothly, patiently scraping with pieces of glass, and whittling with my knife.

  With a gun each, George and I continued to hunt together when neither of us had to be at work. George with his long rifle specialized on squirrels, jack rabbits, and cotton tails, while I with the old scattergun watched with eager eyes for coveys of quail or doves, plovers, and larks. Eventually I became fairly good at handling the old musket and would sometimes knock down a running rabbit.

  If George happened to be busy I often hunted alone; even from the first, neither my father nor anyone else ever questioned my ability to hunt alone with complete safety to myself, some other person, or livestock. I was ten years old, “going on eleven,” and was considered old enough to take care of myself.

  Sometimes if I came near a road passers-by seeing my small figure lugging the long gun seemed surprised and started joshing me a bit. Usually they would yell something like this: “Hey kid! Ain’t that gun too big for ye?” “Whadda you expect to kill? You don’t need to load a gun that long, time you get in range you kin just punch ’em to death!” I paid no attention to such good-natured razzing for “words could not hurt me.”

  I wish it were possible for me to say truthfully that we met with some surprising adventure in our hunting but we did not. While I recall seeing one wolf, he was far away and getting farther every second. The game which we bagged consisted only of rabbits, squirrels, quails, plovers, doves, larks, an occasional prairie chicken or duck, and sometimes an opposum. A few foxes and raccoons were in these woods but we never saw one, for they slept in a den or hollow tree by day and came out to seek food only at night.

  Yet, hunting was fun and had for George and me many “fringe benefits.” Not only was it good, healthful exercise to tramp the woods, fields, and prairies carrying a heavy gun but it taught me, at least, at a very early age how to handle a gun with safety to myself and others. Constant watching for game sharpened our eyes and ears and made us close observers of the plant life. We came to know the common names of all the trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, and types of grass in that part of the Cross Timbers.

  Moreover, w
e learned much of the habits and lifeways not only of the game we sought, but of all wild creatures of the woodlands. Perhaps we did not “learn of every bird its language,” as did little Hiawatha, but we did learn to recognize the songs and cries of virtually all birds of this part of the Cross Timbers. We also came to learn the type of nest that each built and the number and color of the eggs.

  Finally, I think that hunting taught us to love and respect the wild creatures of the forest and to have humanity toward them. We hunted for food. All birds or animals that could not be eaten were perfectly safe from our guns. In addition, we always did our best to stop any boy who wanted to bang away at any bird in sight, even a cardinal, bluebird, sparrow, blue jay, mockingbird, scissor tail, woodpecker, or anything else. Such birds we always did our best to protect.

  We tried to be sure of our game before shooting, and if we wounded a bird we would spend hours searching for it, instead of going on to let it die by inches. Upon one occasion I found a mud hen with an injured wing. I took it home, bound up its broken wing, put it in a coop, and fed and watered it twice a day. In a week or ten days the injured wing was healed, and when the hen was able to fly we took it to a large stock pond and released it.

  We never hunted on Sunday, but Saturday afternoon often found us in the woods with the old musket and long rifle, especially in the winter. On the whole, I have always felt that my hours devoted to hunting were well spent and taught me much that was very useful in my later life.

  8. Disciples of St. Peter and Izaak Walton

  My father never seemed to take much interest in hunting but sometimes boasted a little on his ability as a fisherman. He seldom went fishing with us but upon those rare occasions when he did he usually made good on his claims to being something of an expert in the art of angling. At least he usually caught more fish than any of the rest of us.